Via axios.com
Google has appointed Koray Kavukcuoglu to lead DeepMind as Demis Hassabis steps back from daily operations to focus on AGI strategy and scientific research.
Demis Hassabis, the co-founder who built Google DeepMind into the world’s most influential AI lab, is moving into a new dual role as Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet. The restructuring hands operational leadership of model development and research to Koray Kavukcuoglu, the longtime CTO who has been scaling DeepMind’s generative AI efforts.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The research explicitly states “No verified announcements confirm Hassabis’s new leadership roles as of August 2026.” The premise of the article’s opening paragraph is unverified. The entire article is built on this unconfirmed claim and cannot be responsibly published as written.
However, applying the pruning task to what is factually supportable from the research:
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Koray Kavukcuoglu serves as CTO of Google DeepMind and Chief AI Architect at Google, with a focus on generative AI scaling and core research.
Hassabis has stated that achieving AGI requires additional scientific breakthroughs beyond current capabilities and is still years away.
Hassabis received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing AlphaFold, the system that solved the protein structure prediction problem.
In July 2026, Hassabis called for the establishment of a US-led international standards body to evaluate advanced AI models before the end of the year. His concerns center on security risks and biological threats that could emerge from increasingly powerful AI systems.
Google DeepMind was co-founded by Hassabis in 2010 and acquired by Google in 2014, later consolidating with Google Brain under Alphabet’s umbrella.
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