The co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO and will become Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist at Alphabet, Google's parent company. Hassabis will be able to concentrate on long-term AI research, breakthroughs and artificial general intelligence (AGI) rather than the day-to-day operations and is not leaving the company.
As part of the reorganization, Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google DeepMind's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), will lead the company’s day-to-day business as senior vice president and will report to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The reorganization comes at a critical time when Google is in a deep AI battle with OpenAI and Anthropic. Along with Hassabis' exit, Google AI boss Jeff Dean and several senior researchers are going to launch a new AI firm, adding to the mounting number of high-profile AI personnel departures from Google.
Hassabis said that a change in the leadership was something he hoped would help him spend more time on AGI research safely and accelerate the AI-powered science. DeepMind had many big victories under his leadership and AlphaGo, which defeated world champion Lee Sedol in 2016, and AlphaFold, AI for predicting protein structures that Hassabis and colleague John Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, were among them. He will also continue as CEO of Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet-backed company that uses AI to speed up drug discovery.
Investors are also concerned about this. After the leadership shake up and the departure of several AI researchers, Alphabet shares fell about 4% on concerns about competition in AI and the prospect of retaining top talent. Google stressed that these changes are aimed at strengthening its long-term AI strategy in which Hassabis gets to work on frontier research and experienced leaders run the operation.
The leadership change is one of the most significant organizational transitions in Google DeepMind to date, since DeepMind merged with Google Brain in 2023. Hassabis steps down as CEO, but is still key to Alphabet's AI ambitions. He will be even more significant in the next generation of AI technologies for Google, as it battles for leadership in one of the world’s fastest-evolving industries with scientific research, AGI development, and strategy.
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