Google's head of AI, Demis Hassabis, will step down from his current role to become Alphabet's chief scientist amid a reshuffling at DeepMind that will also include a key engineer's departure. Hassabis will take on two new titles, Alphabet announced: chair of DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet. The change will allow Hassabis to focus on long-term strategy and accelerating scientific breakthroughs, including his work at Isomorphic Labs to help cure disease. As part of the shake-up, DeepMind's chief technology officer and chief AI architect, Koray Kavukcuoglu, will become the division's senior vice president and oversee its operations, including the development of Google's flagship frontier models and products known as Gemini.
Leadership Changes
Longtime Google engineer Jeff Dean is also leaving the company after nearly three decades to 'try something new.' Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post announcing the news that the company is excited to support Dean in his new venture. Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, and four years later, Google bought the research lab for $650 million. His co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, is currently the chief of Microsoft's AI segment.
Industry Context
Google is competing for customers alongside other major AI developers including Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, as well as DeepSeek and Moonshot in China. The industry is also chasing a theoretical milestone known as advanced general intelligence (AGI), which is a point when AI software matches the capabilities of human thinking. Hassabis wrote in a blog post that he believes AGI is close at hand and that now is the right time for him to hand over his day-to-day operational responsibilities at Google DeepMind.
