Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai just shook up the leadership team at Google DeepMind. The company’s doubling down on artificial general intelligence (AGI), cutting-edge research, and commercial AI products.
Here’s what’s changing: Demis Hassabis won’t be handling DeepMind’s daily operations anymore. Instead, he’s stepping into a new role as DeepMind’s Chair and Alphabet’s Chief Scientist. That means he’ll keep leading Isomorphic Labs, Alphabet’s AI-driven drug discovery company, while advising DeepMind’s leaders on research and long-term AGI strategy.
Hassabis explained that stepping back frees him up to think about the big picture—what AGI really means for the world, and how to shape its future responsibly. He called this a defining moment, saying AGI feels “close at hand” and needs thoughtful guidance to actually help humanity.
Now, Koray Kavukcuoglu, who’s been with DeepMind for more than 13 years and is currently chief technology officer, takes over as Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind. He’ll answer directly to Pichai and head up everything from Gemini model development and AI research, to Gemini apps and tools for developers. Kavukcuoglu’s no stranger to breakthroughs—he helped build DeepMind’s deep learning team and worked on projects like WaveNet for speech and DQN in reinforcement learning. Hassabis said he fully trusts Kavukcuoglu and the executive team to steer DeepMind’s next chapter.
All these moves come as Google’s AI efforts gain serious traction. The Gemini app now has over 950 million monthly users, and developers and businesses are snatching up its models. Google’s AI portfolio is growing too, with launches like Gemini Flash, a live Cyber model, and the Gemma models—those have already racked up over 900 million downloads. The company says its researchers keep pushing ahead on robotics and other big projects, with Gemini 4 already on the horizon.
Hassabis pointed out that Gemini is showing up all across Google now—in AI Mode, in Search AI Overviews, and beyond. He called DeepMind the company’s “AI engine room” and said their work could lead to big advances in human health, maybe even new treatments for diseases like cancer.
One big departure: Jeff Dean is leaving Google after 27 years. He and Sanjay Ghemawat, another longtime Google engineer, are starting a public benefit company focused on machine learning, science, and engineering breakthroughs. Both were instrumental in building the backbone of Google’s search and, later, the neural networks behind modern AI. Google isn’t cutting ties—they’ll be the founding investor and cloud partner, and plan to work together on machine learning systems and infrastructure.
Pichai says these changes are all about helping Google move faster without losing sight of what matters most: frontier AI, AGI, and scientific research. It’s a tough race these days, with every tech giant pushing to build smarter AI and make it part of everything from everyday apps to advanced research tools.
