Google DeepMind, the artificial intelligence research subsidiary of Alphabet, is experiencing a significant executive reshuffle. Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, announced the changes, which include several key executives departing the company.
Hassabis Transitions, Kavukcuoglu Ascends
Demis Hassabis, who served as CEO of Google DeepMind, is stepping down from his role. He will, however, remain deeply involved with the company, transitioning to the position of Chair of Google DeepMind (GDM) and taking on the broader title of Chief Scientist of Alphabet. Hassabis will also continue to lead Isomorphic Labs, an AI-driven drug discovery company.
Koray Kavukcuoglu, previously DeepMind’s Chief Technology Officer and Alphabet’s Chief AI Architect, is stepping into a more prominent role. He will now serve as Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind, reporting directly to Sundar Pichai. In this capacity, Kavukcuoglu will oversee the critical areas of Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, and the teams responsible for the Gemini app and developer tools.
Key Departures and New Ventures
The leadership changes also coincide with the departure of Jeff Dean, one of Google's most influential engineers, who has been its Chief Scientist for over 27 years. Dean is leaving Google to co-found a new startup named Discovery Loop. This venture aims to leverage AI to automate machine learning, scientific research, and engineering, thereby accelerating discoveries.
Joining Dean in his new endeavor are three other former Google executives and AI researchers: Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le. Pichai expressed support for their new public benefit corporation, which focuses on accelerating discoveries in machine learning, science, and engineering.
Google's AI Challenges Amidst Competition
This executive reshuffle comes at a critical juncture for Google, as the company navigates an intense global race in artificial intelligence. Google has faced recent setbacks in its AI efforts, including a multi-month delay for the release of its flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro model, which was initially anticipated for June.
Furthermore, Google has seen a loss of key AI talent from its Gemini team. Noam Shazeer, who co-led the Gemini project, has reportedly moved to OpenAI. John Jumper, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist recognized for his groundbreaking work on AlphaFold, has reportedly joined Anthropic, another prominent AI research company.