At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Astro Teller, who leads Alphabet's 'moonshot factory' known as X, disclosed that the department is reshaping its strategy for bringing audacious technological projects to market. Instead of keeping them in-house at Alphabet, there's a shift toward spinning these projects off into independent companies. Central to this approach is a specialized venture capital fund, Series X Capital, which focuses solely on investing in companies that have emerged from the X department. In these new ventures, Alphabet takes only a minority stake. Teller elaborated that if Alphabet were to retain a larger share, the projects would, in essence, still be under Alphabet's umbrella and might not reach their full potential. Hence, by adopting a minority shareholder position, Alphabet enables these projects to forge strong connections outside its ecosystem, fostering strategic collaborations without imposing control.

The 'moonshot' projects, as defined by the X department, must satisfy three criteria: they should tackle significant global challenges, offer products or services that provide fundamental solutions to these problems, and hinge on groundbreaking technologies. Teller highlighted that the more outlandish a project sounds, the more attention it garners. This is because, by their very nature, sensible projects do not fit the 'moonshot' bill.

The X department kicks off over 100 projects each year, boasting a mere 2% success rate. Nevertheless, it employs a swift trial-and-error process to sift through and identify the most promising concepts. Among the companies that have been spun off are Waymo, a pioneer in autonomous driving; Wing, a leader in drone delivery services; and Taara, a specialist in wireless optical communication technology.