The Google Division That Embraces Failure

Summary

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WSJ Tech News Briefing

Episode: The Google Division That Embraces Failure
Date: September 26, 2025
Host: Katie Dayton
Notable Guests: Chris Maher (WSJ Reporter), Helen Riley (CFO & COO, Google X), Wendy Bounds (WSJ Leadership Institute)

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Episode Overview

This episode of the WSJ Tech News Briefing explores two powerful stories about innovation—one about ambitious plans struggling to get off the ground (Intel in Ohio) and one about the internal culture of wild experimentation and learning from failure at Google X, Alphabet’s “moonshot factory.” The main focus and unique insight comes from Helen Riley, CFO and COO of Google X (“X”), who discusses how the organization fosters radical innovation by embracing the possibility—and value—of failure.

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Intel’s Semiconductor Project in Ohio: Promises and Delays

(00:19–05:07)

Setting the Scene: New Albany, Ohio

• Chris Maher paints a picture of New Albany as an affluent, planned community outside Columbus, now home to major data centers and the site of Intel's high-profile chip factory investment.

  “I would be down a one lane country road and then all of a sudden I’m at this massive data center complex.” (01:35, Chris Maher)

Initial Optimism and Local Expectations

• In 2022, Intel announced a flagship $28 billion project (originally $20 billion) to turn Ohio into the “silicon heartland,” promising:
  • 7,000 construction jobs
  • 3,000 full-time factory jobs
• Locals were promised “transformative” economic impact and state leadership hailed it as a historic win.

  “There was so much optimism and enthusiasm initially.” (02:23 Chris Maher)

Delays and Challenges

• The project delayed multiple times; opening now pushed to 2030 at the earliest (a five-year delay). Workforce has been cut by 30%, and only about 1,000 construction workers remain on site.

  “...the first of two factories would open in 2030. So five year delay, that’s at the earliest.” (03:15, Chris Maher)

Why the Stumbles?

• Intel doesn’t currently have a clear customer or product focus for the new facility; construction is being “adjusted” in response to uncertain market demand and chip industry competition.

  “The company doesn’t really have a clear customer at this point and you know exactly know which product it’s going to be making.” (03:54, Chris Maher)

Political and Economic Fallout

• The state provided $2 billion in incentives, including almost $700 million in infrastructure.
• Some politicians now express frustration, with one senator calling for a fraud investigation as costs and local disruptions mount.

  “There’s been a lot of, I’d say maybe consternation… it’s really been disruptive and a bit of an economic hardship for people there.” (04:28, Chris Maher)

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Google X: Innovation by Embracing Failure

(05:57–12:04)

Inside the Moonshot Factory

• Helen Riley offers a rare look inside X, Alphabet’s advanced R&D division (“moonshot factory”), which produces cutting-edge projects but is equally known for “recycling” or sunsetting bold bets.

Notable Projects and Their Trajectories

• Waymo: Self-driving cars aiming to reduce the 1 million annual global road fatalities.

  “They’ve driven 100 million miles on roads to date, and they're serving about 250,000 rides every single week.” (06:33, Helen Riley)

• Wing: Drone deliveries, now partnering with Walmart and vital during natural disasters.

  “You can literally get on an app and have goods delivered to your door in a matter of minutes... they partnered with Walmart to actually get those supplies delivered.” (07:10, Helen Riley)

• Loon: High-altitude balloons intended to provide Internet connectivity to underserved populations. Although technologically sound, it couldn’t achieve economic viability and was discontinued.

  “Even though the technology worked, we couldn’t actually get the techno economics to work.” (07:58, Helen Riley)

• Tara: Born from Loon’s “compost”—not just knowledge, but teams and culture—now delivering high-speed internet in regions of India, Africa, and the Americas.

  “If you’re working on a Moonshot idea...you want people to still work on it and give it a try. And one of the ways that we can actually inspire people...is if they know that the thing they're working on has the potential to have a second life.” (09:21, Helen Riley)

The Philosophy: Learning > Perfection

• X’s remarkable ability is to learn from failure—sometimes called “moonshot compost”—and apply those learnings elsewhere.

• The unique organizational incentives at X reward the journey, curiosity, and learning, instead of only successful, goal-hitting outcomes.

  “I have not failed I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” (10:21, Helen Riley, quoting Thomas Edison)

• Riley explains that rewarding only goal completion would lower ambition:

  “If you only reward hitting the goal, what are people going to do? They’re going to lower their ambition. And that’s the last thing that we want.” (11:00, Helen Riley)

Tactics for Everyday Innovation

• Helen Riley emphasizes cultivating:
  • Humble, growth-oriented mindset
  • Passion and willingness to try the unprecedented
  • Safety to “face complete uncertainty” without fear of being penalized for honest failure
• These insights, she argues, translate to any company or team looking to push beyond incremental innovation into the unknown.

  “We really focus on how do we reward the learnings and the journey and the fact that they actually tried something difficult.” (11:00, Helen Riley)

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Memorable Quotes

• Helen Riley:

  “Moonshot compost... see whether a new idea can grow.” (08:42)
  “If you’re working on a Moonshot idea... you want people to still work on it and give it a try. And one of the ways that we can actually inspire people... is if they know that the thing they’re working on has the potential to have a second life.” (09:21)
  “I have not failed I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” (10:21, quoting Edison)
  “If you only reward hitting the goal, what are people going to do? They’re going to lower their ambition. And that’s the last thing that we want.” (11:00)

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Key Takeaways

• Truly transformative innovation requires rewarding bold attempts and lessons learned, not just end results.
• Failed experiments at X can take on “second lives”—ideas, technology, and even team members are re-used in new directions.
• This mindset lowers the fear of failure and raises the stakes and ambition for creative problem solving.

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Timestamps

• 00:19–05:07: Intel’s Ohio plant—delays, local impact, and political concerns
• 05:57–12:04: Google X deep dive—project showcase, the culture of learning from failure, and advice for fostering innovation

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(Advertisements, host intros, and outros have been omitted for clarity and focus.)

Transcript

[Chris Maher]

Get out of the headlines and into real conversations happening inside global organizations with the Executive Insights Podcast brought to you by aws. Listen in on the Executive Insights podcast available on all major podcast platforms.

[Katie Dayton]

Welcome to Tech News briefing. It's Friday, September 26th. I'm Katie Dayton for the Wall Street Journal. Today, two tales in innovation when it works and when it breaks down. We venture deep into the cornfields of Ohio to explore what's happening to Intel's planned $28 billion semiconductor factory project, which was supposed to open this year. Then we lift the lid on Google's so called Moonshot factory and its unique approach to corporate failure. But first, in 2022, when intel announced it would be building a semiconductor factory site in the heart of Ohio, locals were largely optimistic about the promised economic boom. But three years later, some people there are concerned they're just going to be left with gaping holes in the ground. Intel has delayed the project twice, announced workforce cuts of around 30%, and said that the first factory now won't open until 2030 at the earliest. WSJ reporter Chris Maher went on the ground to find out more. So Chris, this story centers on the town of New Albany, Ohio, which you visited in your reporting. Can you paint us a picture of what it's like there?

[Chris Maher]

New Albany is a really interesting place. It was planned largely so it's very organized, it's affluent, it's maybe just about 20 minutes outside of Columbus, Ohio, the Ohio State Capitol. And, and New Albany has a lot of Georgian architecture, beautiful shops and things. It also is one of the country's biggest data center hubs. And it also became the site of Intel's very large investment in a semiconductor factory. When you're driving around the area, I would be down a one lane country road and then all of a sudden I'm at this massive data center complex. So it's really transforming this region and it's going through some growing pains and so that's affecting people that live there right now too.

[Katie Dayton]

Going back when and how did Intel's relationship with the town begin?

[Chris Maher]

The Intel Fabs project in New Albany was announced in early 2022. There was a lot of fanfare. It was a big win, a coup for the state of Ohio, and Governor Mike DeWine and the CEO of Intel at the time said this was going to transform the Rust Belt into the silicon heartland. There was so much optimism and enthusiasm initially.

[Katie Dayton]

What was this community led to expect? You know, aside from the plant itself, what else had they been promised?

[Chris Maher]

Initially the investment was going to be $20 billion. That was increased to $28 billion. And the CEO of Intel at the time said that, you know, it could even increase to $100 billion in terms of jobs. The project was going to create about 7,000 construction jobs and about 3,000 full time jobs once the factories were completed.

[Katie Dayton]

So some big, big investment there, what happened?

[Chris Maher]

So the project has been delayed several times. The start date was supposed to be this year in 2025, but after a couple of delays, it's now projected that the first of two factories would open in 2030. So five year delay, that's at the earliest. The other factory on site would open a little bit after that. And even just recently in July, the CEO of the company now said that they were going to slow construction again. So the project is still moving along, but right now there's about 1,000 construction workers on site.

[Katie Dayton]

What were some of the reasons that intel gave for delaying this project?

[Chris Maher]

The company has come under a lot of pressure in terms of competing with other chip manufacturers. When I talked to people locally, they were saying this is the biggest project in our state's history, but it's also one where the company doesn't really have a clear customer at this point and you know exactly know which product it's going to be making. So intel lately has been saying that they're going to adjust their plans for the customer demand and see how the market develops.

[Katie Dayton]

And Ohio itself also invested in this project. How have politicians reacted to what's been.

[Chris Maher]

Happening at the state level? There's been a lot of, I'd say maybe consternation. There was a state senator who called for a fraud investigation because Ohio has provided a lot of financial incentives that total about $2 billion. And that includes about $691 million just in infrastructure improvements. And I'll say when I was there, you can clearly see that roads have been widened, the highways have been expanded, there's miles of storm pipes and wastewater treatment plants. All the things you would expect, but costs hundreds of millions of dollars. So it's really been disruptive and a bit of an economic hardship for people there.

[Katie Dayton]

That was WSJ reporter Chris Maher. Coming up, we lift the lid on X. No, not that one, the Google one. That's after the break.

[Morgan Stanley Announcer]

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[Katie Dayton]

X, the Google division known as its moonshot factory is, is one of the Alphabet company's most elusive divisions, paving the way for tech breakthroughs like Waymo. The WSJ Leadership Institute's Wendy Bounds recently sat down with X's Chief Financial officer and Chief Operations Officer Helen Riley to learn what an innovation mindset really requires. The two spoke at the WSJ Technology Council Summit. And just so you know, they start by referencing a slideshow of projects that X has worked on.

[Wendy Bounds]

Let's tee up a couple of the projects you all have been working on. Tell us what we're looking at.

[Helen Riley]

Absolutely. So what you're looking at is one of the earliest prototypes of a Waymo car. So what was the problem we were trying to solve with Waymo? There's about a million deaths on the road, on roads every single year. And so our goal was to see whether we could actually take some of the decision making and put it into a computer. And so you look at Waymo now, and I think they've driven 100 million miles on roads to date, and they're serving about 250,000 rides every single week. And we expect that to continue. So I'm super excited. They're already in multiple cities and we're just going to see much more expansion.

[Wendy Bounds]

What am I looking at here?

[Helen Riley]

All right, so this is from Wing. So this is our drone delivery service. Essentially, there's a lot of friction in last mile delivery. You've got massive traffic on roads, friction in terms of timing to actually get goods to where you want them to be. And so Wing has launched a delivery service and they're actually partnering with Walmart where you can literally get on an app and have goods delivered to your door in a matter of minutes, whether it's like groceries or pharmaceuticals or whatever you may want. And for those of you that remember Hurricane Helene, there were areas where roads were completely inaccessible, and so people really needed baby formula or medical supplies. And so they partnered with Walmart to. To actually get those supplies delivered.

[Wendy Bounds]

Yeah, pretty amazing. Let's stay in the air here.

[Helen Riley]

Yes, let's stay in the air. So this is from Loon. So this was our communications project. So again, like a third of people around the globe still remain unconnected. And we all know that there are better health outcomes, educational outcomes, economic outcomes, when people have connectivity. And so this is a sort of balloon that would fly, fly in the stratosphere and basically be able to beam connectivity between the balloons and then down to the ground. But I think this is an interesting one that we actually included here because even though we were working on the right problem, space connectivity and even though the technology worked, we couldn't actually get the techno economics to work.

[Wendy Bounds]

But this led to the next one we're going to see.

[Helen Riley]

Exactly. So this led to the next one. And this is by the way, part of our whole philosophy at X, the Moonshot factory, where even if we try something and it doesn't work in the sort of form that we approach, we don't just throw out what we've learned completely. We'll often go back to the drawing board and take those learnings and see whether they can be reinvented. We essentially call it like Moonshot compost. We basically compost the ideas and then see whether a new idea can grow. And so this is an image from a project called Tara Company, now called Tara, which actually just recently spun out of Google X. And they are basically an engineer from.

[Wendy Bounds]

Loon is working on this.

[Helen Riley]

So we had an engineer and some other members of the Loon team. So you're right, it's not even just the IP and the know how that gets composted, it's also team members that will switch over. Which by the way is actually a really important point in terms of inspiring people. Because if you're working on a Moonshot idea and and there's a high probability that it's not going to work out, you want people to still work on it and give it a try. And one of the ways that we can actually inspire people to go for it anyway is if they know that the thing they're working on has the potential to have a second life. And so that's exactly what happened here. So the team at Tara is now serving communities with sort of high speed Internet in India and in Africa and throughout the Americas as well.

[Wendy Bounds]

And I want now to take you to pull back because I mean everybody's probably thinking innovation at Moonshot, right? Tell us what innovation tactics from Moonshot from X can people in this room actually borrow from.

[Helen Riley]

So reminder, like our focus is really on inspiring radical innovation and we really want our teams to have an innovation mindset. And so there's a bunch of things that we do to really inspire that way of thinking. I think the best way to think about the Moonshot mindset is through the quote from Thomas Edison that hopefully you're familiar with. I have not failed I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. And I think that really gets to the heart of what it truly means to be innovative. He understood that the only way to achieve the truly audacious is to be brave enough to try and to be willing to make lots of mistakes along.

[Wendy Bounds]

The way and to not get fired.

[Helen Riley]

If you do and to not get well. And then that's the key. And so those are some of the practices. And so we're trying to inspire this. Same with a team is to have like a humble growth mindset and yet at the same time be really curious and passionate and go after really hard things and be okay facing sort of complete uncertainty about what they do. So one example I would give is, you know, traditionally in companies you're setting goals and all in sort of incentives and like compensation is tied to did they hit the goal or not exactly as defined. But when you're sort of pursuing radical innovation, you don't even know if the goal that you hit is the right goal to set. And quite frequently there's a very low probability that the thing you're actually working on is going to work. And so if you only reward hitting the goal, what are people going to do? They're going to lower their ambition. And that's the last thing that we want. So instead of instead we really focus on how do we reward the learnings and the journey and the fact that they actually tried something difficult.

[Katie Dayton]

That was the WSJ Leadership Institute's Head of content, Wendy Bounds, interviewing Google X's Helen Riley. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang. I'm your host, Katy Dayton. Additional support this week from Melanie Roy, Jessica Fenton and Michael Lavalle wrote our theme music. Our development producer is Ayesha Al Nuslim. Chris Sinsley is the deputy editor and Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of News Audio. We'll be back later this morning with TMB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening. From improving emergency response times to protecting against cyber attacks, local, state and federal governments are innovating with Google AI. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g co AmericanInnovation.