Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind to take on a broader role at Alphabet, Google's parent company1,4. Hassabis will become chief scientist of Alphabet and chair of Google DeepMind, according to a blog post by CEO Sundar Pichai published on Wednesday.
In a memo to colleagues published by Google, Hassabis said he decided "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 leadership change extends beyond Hassabis. Jeff Dean, a leading AI researcher who has been at Google for decades, is leaving the company to start a new initiative called Discovery Loop with Sanjay Ghemawat, another senior technical leader at Google2.
Koray Kavukcuoglu will head DeepMind as senior vice president, reporting to Sundar Pichai.
The shakeup comes as Google has struggled to keep up with frontier AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI, especially in AI coding, according to Business Insider. Google's next big AI model has been delayed several times this year.
ANALYSIS The restructuring separates strategic vision from day-to-day execution, elevating Hassabis to an Alphabet-wide role while installing Kavukcuoglu to run operations. Dean's departure alongside the CEO transition removes two senior figures from the technical leadership simultaneously.
Hassabis had been considered by some as a potential future CEO of Google. ◆ His shift to a chief scientist and chair role represents a notable redirection of that trajectory.