Google Reshuffles AI Leadership as Demis Hassabis Takes Alphabet Chief Scientist Role

Google has reshuffled its AI leadership, appointing Demis Hassabis as Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet while promoting Koray Kavukcuoglu to Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind, as the company pushes to accelerate its AI roadmap.

The changes, announced by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, shift Hassabis away from day-to-day operational responsibilities at Google DeepMind so he can focus on the company's long-term work on artificial general intelligence (AGI) and scientific research. Hassabis will continue leading Isomorphic Labs and advise Google DeepMind’s research and model teams.

“We have to accelerate all this work and stay focused on the AI frontier,” Pichai said in a message to employees. “At the same time, there’s never been a more important moment to shape the future of AGI and science.”

Kavukcuoglu, who has spent 13 years at DeepMind and currently serves as its Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Architect, will report directly to Pichai. He will oversee Gemini model development, frontier AI research, the Gemini app and the company’s developer teams.

Pichai said the leadership changes come as Google’s AI products continue to expand. He said Gemini models are seeing growing demand from developers and enterprises, the Gemini app has crossed 950 million monthly users, and Gemma open models have surpassed 900 million downloads. He also pointed to recent advances in Gemini Robotics and upcoming model releases.

Google also announced that Jeff Dean, Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research, will leave the company after 27 years. Along with Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat, Dean is launching Discovery Loop, an independent public benefit corporation that develops AI systems for machine learning, scientific discovery and engineering research. Google said it will remain a founding investor, provide cloud infrastructure and collaborate on research into machine learning systems and related infrastructure advances.

Explaining the transition, Hassabis said he wants to dedicate more time to shaping the future of AGI.

“I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life, and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand,” he said. “It’s critical that we collectively get the next steps right to ensure this all goes well for humanity.”

Hassabis said Kavukcuoglu would continue leading Google’s AI model efforts alongside the existing executive team.

“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,” he said.

In his new role, Hassabis said he will work with Pichai on strategic AGI initiatives while spending more time at Isomorphic Labs, Alphabet’s AI drug discovery company.

“As you’ve heard me say many times, I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health,” Hassabis said. “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.”

Pichai said the leadership changes are intended to maintain Google’s momentum across its AI research, infrastructure and products as competition in frontier AI continues to intensify.