Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced changes to the Google DeepMind team today, including a new role for Demis Hassabis.
Demis Hassabis was CEO of Google DeepMind, and is now handing over “day-to-day operational responsibilities at GDM.” Hassabis is now Chair of GDM and Chief Scientist of Alphabet.
We have arrived at a pivotal moment in human history. I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand. It’s critical that we collectively get the next steps right to ensure this all goes well for humanity and we usher in an incredible new age of discovery and wonder.
— Hassabis
Pichai says this role “allows him to put his full attention on actively shaping the future of AGI.” Hassabis described this change as giving him the “time and space to focus on the big picture and help influence what is to come to the best of my ability.”
Google DeepMind will now be led by Koray Kavukcuoglu. He was previously Chief Technology Officer of GDM and will now become Senior Vice President (SVP), reporting to Pichai. In this role, he will “oversee Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams.”
Pichai: “Koray has been at DeepMind since its early days, and over his 13 years there, he has started our deep learning team and led the way on breakthroughs like WaveNet and DQN. I look forward to seeing him lead GDM into this next chapter.”Hassabis: “Koray and I have been working together for over 13 years, since the early days of DeepMind. He is one of the world’s foremost AI experts and has been championing GDM’s mission from day one. I have total confidence in Koray, Josh, and the rest of the GDM exec team as they continue to spearhead the latest AI developments across Google. The Gemini models are in good hands with Koray and the leads, as they have been for a while, and I’m excited about the great progress we’re making with our new models including Gemini 4.”
Hassabis will “continue to work closely with Sundar on strategic and global AGI matters, and to advise Koray, Josh, and the GDM leads.” He will remain CEO of Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spin-off focused on using AI to accelerate drug discovery.
As you’ve heard me say many times, I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health. It’s time for AI to prove its unequivocal value to the world, and what better way to demonstrate that than to help finally cure diseases like cancer.
— Hassabis
Pichai also announced today that Jeff Dean is leaving Google to launch an “independent public benefit corporation to accelerate discoveries in ML, science, and engineering” called Discovery Loop. Gemini co-lead Oriol Vinyals is also leaving Google to join Dean.
Google is a founding investor, Cloud partner, and plans to “collaborate on a research framework for ML systems and related infrastructure advances.”
Hassabis ends on the following note:
As a business we are in an incredibly strong position. We are the only company that has the full stack and we’re world-class at every layer from infrastructure to cloud to frontier models to AI-first applications. We have all the ingredients to lead from here, and I firmly believe we will.
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