Google parent company Alphabet just announced major changes to the leadership of its AI lab.
The biggest update is that Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping down from his day-to-day role of running the lab behind the company’s Gemini models.
Hassabis will now serve as chair of Google DeepMind and take on the new role of chief scientist at Alphabet. He will also continue to lead Isomorphic Labs, the tech giant’s AI drug-discovery company.
Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010 with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman, who is now CEO of Microsoft AI. Google acquired the company in 2014.
He will be replaced by Google DeepMind Chief Technology Officer Koray Kavukcuoglu, who will take over the lab’s daily operations as senior vice president of Google DeepMind.
“I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand,” Hassabis said in a blog post about the changes. “With this backdrop, I’ve decided that now is the right time for me to hand over my day-to-day operational responsibilities at GDM, so that I have the time and space to focus on the big picture and help influence what is to come to the best of my ability.”
The shakeup arrived as Google faces growing questions about whether it can keep up with other frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.
While Google’s cloud business is booming, so is its spending.
Revenue from the company’s cloud unit skyrocketed 82% year over year to $24.8 billion during the second quarter. However, the company is forecasting between $195 billion and $205 billion in capital spending this year, primarily on the infrastructure to support its AI ambitions.
Additionally, Google has delayed the release of Gemini 3.5 Pro, its flagship model that was expected to launch in June. Bloomberg reported last month, citing unnamed sources, that the model fell short of some internal goals. Axios reported that low morale also played a role.
Google, however, is framing the reorganization as a way to speed up its AI work while giving Hassabis more time to focus on artificial general intelligence.
“We’ve got amazing talent, world-class compute, and products that bring AI to more people than any other company,” Pichai said in the company’s blog post. “We have to accelerate all this work and stay focused on the AI frontier. At the same time, there’s never been a more important moment to shape the future of AGI and science.”
The leadership overhaul also included a high-profile departure.
Jeff Dean, a 27-year Google veteran and most recently Google DeepMind’s chief scientist, is leaving the company alongside several colleagues to launch a public-benefit corporation called Discovery Loop.
Google said it will serve as a founding investor and cloud partner for the new company.
In a farewell message posted on X, Dean said Discovery Loop will work to “automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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