In a major development, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced a leadership change at Google DeepMind. In a post on X, Pichai confirmed that Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind and will now become Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet. Hassabis will also continue to lead Isomorphic Labs, Google’s AI-powered drug discovery company.
According to Pichai, the new role will allow Hassabis to focus on the future of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and scientific research.
“Just shared some changes we’re making to the teams at @GoogleDeepMind. @DemisHassabis is stepping up to become Chair of
@GoogleDeepMind & Chief Scientist of Alphabet, in addition to leading @IsomorphicLabs . He’ll be able to dedicate his time and focus on shaping the future of AGI and scientific discovery. It’s work that is vitally important to Alphabet and humanity, and I can’t imagine a better person than Demis to do it. He’ll stay closely connected to Koray and the GDM teams,” Pichai wrote on X.
As part of the leadership reshuffle, Koray Kavukcuoglu has been appointed Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind. He will now lead the company’s AI model development, Google DeepMind research, and the Gemini AI and developer teams.
Pichai said Koray has been with Google DeepMind for 13 years and has played an important role in several AI breakthroughs, including WaveNet and Deep Q-Network (DQN).
“Koray has been at GDM for 13 years and is a world-renowned expert in the field, starting our deep learning team and driving breakthroughs like WaveNet & DQN. GDM is in great hands!” he added.
The leadership changes come at a time when Google is investing heavily in AI and preparing its next generation of Gemini models. With Hassabis focusing on AGI and scientific discovery, Koray will now handle the day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind’s AI development efforts.
In the blog post, Pichai said Google has made strong progress across its AI business. He stressed that Gemini models are seeing high demand from developers and businesses, while the Gemini app now has more than 950 million monthly users.
He also pointed to recent AI breakthroughs, including Gemini Robotics, saying the company now wants to move even faster in the AI race.
Pichai said moving Hassabis into a broader role will help Alphabet focus on the next stage of AI development while allowing Google DeepMind to continue building new AI models under Koray Kavukcuoglu’s leadership.
The Google CEO also said DeepMind has built strong momentum over the past year. He revealed that the company’s Flash models are in high demand, its Cyber model has already gone live, and the open-source Gemma family has crossed 900 million downloads.
According to him, the Alphabet-owned tech giant is now preparing for its next AI model launches and remains focused on improving areas where it still needs to do better.
In his message to employees, Hassabis said the company is entering a new phase where he wants to spend more time shaping the future of AGI and scientific research. He also said he will continue leading Isomorphic Labs, Google’s AI-powered drug discovery company, because he believes AI can play a major role in improving healthcare.
“I have 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 wrote.
