“NEW YORK. A series of personnel shifts within top management is shaking up the artificial intelligence business at internet giant Google. Demis Hassabis—a superstar in the AI field and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry—is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind, the company’s AI division. He will, however, remain with the division in a new capacity as Chair of the Board, and will also become Chief Scientist for Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
Other executives are leaving the firm altogether. Jeff Dean, previously the Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind, is founding his own AI company, Discovery Loop, alongside three other former Google executives. A Google veteran, Dean joined the company in 1999 as its 30th employee. He has played a prominent role in Google’s AI business for years; in 2011, he founded Google Brain, the company’s AI unit. That division was merged with DeepMind in 2023, with Hassabis leading the combined AI operations ever since.
The changes caused some turbulence on the stock market: Alphabet’s share price fell by four percent on Wednesday.
In a message to staff, Hassabis stated that he intends to step back from day-to-day operations to focus on broader strategic issues. Koray Kavukcuoglu, currently the division’s Chief Technology Officer, will take over the leadership of Google DeepMind. Unlike Hassabis, his official title will not be CEO, but rather Senior Vice President; he will, however, report directly to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of both Alphabet and Google.
These changes come at a time when, although Google has achieved some [success] in the AI business can point to successes, but is also grappling with difficulties. The corporation has a wide range of AI initiatives: these include the Gemini AI model and its associated apps, AI features integrated into the Google search engine and its cloud computing business, as well as its own proprietary AI chips.
Initially, Google lagged behind major American AI specialists like OpenAI and Anthropic in terms of its AI models, though it has since made up ground. In particular, the version known as Gemini 3—introduced last autumn—was met with a positive response. However, it appears that Google is currently facing challenges in this very area. The release of Gemini 3.5 Pro—a new version of the model that the company had originally announced for June—has been delayed and has yet to reach the market. This raises the question of whether Google has once again lost some ground to its competitors.
Against this backdrop, the changes in leadership positions are fueling further uncertainty. Moreover, these shifts come just weeks after two prominent Google researchers left the company. John Jumper, who won a Nobel Prize alongside Demis Hassabis, moved to Anthropic. Google also lost Noam Shazeer—a member of the team that, nearly a decade ago, developed the now-famous "Transformer" architecture. This architecture serves as a foundational building block for many AI technologies and is the "T" in the name of OpenAI’s AI model, ChatGPT. Shazeer has since joined OpenAI.
In a message to staff, Google CEO Sundar Pichai spoke of "strong momentum" within the company’s AI business, while adding that Google remains "super-focused on areas where we need to improve." He emphasized that Google must move quickly while keeping a clear objective in sight.
When Alphabet recently reported its quarterly results, its stock price fell by seven percent. This decline was attributed to the company’s announcement that it intends to significantly increase its investments this year to increase it to between $195 billion and $205 billion. The funds are primarily being directed toward the expansion of AI infrastructure. The stock price has since recovered.
Hassabis is a British native. As a teenager, he was one of the world’s top-ranked chess players in his age group, and he began developing video games at a young age. He studied computer science and later earned a PhD in cognitive neuroscience. In 2010, he co-founded DeepMind. The company was sold to Google in 2014 for a reported $650 million, with Hassabis moving to Google as part of the deal. He and his former colleague John Jumper were awarded the Nobel Prize for their development of the AI model AlphaFold2, which can predict the structures of nearly all known proteins.
Beyond DeepMind, Hassabis has long pursued other interests. In 2021, he founded Isomorphic Labs—a company within the Alphabet group—which aims to use AI to accelerate drug discovery. Just a few months ago, it raised $2.1 billion from investors. Hassabis serves as the CEO of Isomorphic, and he has stated in his message, he stated that he intends to focus more intensely on this work. He noted that the company is making "rapid and promising progress," with his goals including helping to cure diseases such as cancer.
Recently, Hassabis has also become increasingly involved in political debates surrounding AI. In a recent blog post, he proposed the establishment of a regulatory body in the United States—staffed by independent experts—to evaluate new AI models before their release. In his message, Google CEO Sundar Pichai explicitly pointed out that Hassabis had recently spent a significant amount of time on "external communication." For this reason, he explained, they had long been discussing a new role for Hassabis that would allow him to play an active part in shaping the future of AI.” [1]
1. Ein Paukenschlag in Googles KI-Geschäft: Nobelpreisträger Demis Hassabis übernimmt neue Rollen, andere Manager verlassen den Konzern ganz / Wechsel beunruhigen die Börse. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 07 Aug 2026: 26. ROLAND LINDNER
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