Google AI shake-up puts Greek Cypriot Hassabis in top science role

Google parent Alphabet has overhauled the leadership of its artificial intelligence operations, moving Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis from the day-to-day running of Google DeepMind into a newly created group-wide science role, while four senior figures behind Gemini leave to launch their own company. The changes come at a sensitive time for Google, with the most powerful version of its latest Gemini model still unreleased despite an initial June launch date. The delay has raised concerns among investors that the company could lose ground to OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which recruited senior Google researchers this summer. Alphabet shares fell 4 per cent following Wednesday’s announcement. Hassabis, who has Greek Cypriot roots through his father, whose family comes from Famagusta, will become chief scientist of Alphabet and chair of Google DeepMind. He will step away from his main managerial duties at the AI laboratory but remain closely involved in its research and long-term strategy. The London-born scientist, who received the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on AlphaFold, linked the move to the growing proximity of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. The term describes a stage at which computer systems could demonstrate intelligence comparable to that of humans across a broad range of tasks. Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said, “Demis and I have long discussed a role that would allow him to fully dedicate himself to shaping the future of AGI.” “This is a vital piece of work for Alphabet and humanity, and I can’t think of a better person to take on this task than Demis,” he added. Meanwhile, Google DeepMind chief technology officer Koray Kavukcuoglu will assume responsibility for the unit’s daily operations as senior vice-president, rather than CEO. He will also retain his position as Alphabet’s chief AI architect. Under the new structure, Kavukcuoglu will oversee Gemini model development, frontier AI research and the teams behind the Gemini application and developer products. He has worked at DeepMind for 13 years and previously led research behind technologies including WaveNet and deep reinforcement-learning system DQN. The appointment could also push Google DeepMind towards a more product-focused direction. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that senior Google Cloud executives welcomed the change, with Kavukcuoglu already more closely involved than Hassabis in cooperation between the research laboratory and Google’s main AI revenue business. Hassabis, by comparison, will concentrate on AGI research, strategy and its wider impact on society, supported by a small number of direct collaborators. In his message to staff, he also referred to “great progress” on Google’s AI models, including an unreleased system known as Gemini 4. Furthermore, he plans to devote more time to Isomorphic Labs, the AI-driven drug discovery company spun out of DeepMind, where he remains founder and CEO. Hassabis said, “I have always believed that the number one application of AI should be improving human health.” “It’s time for AI to prove its undeniable value to the world, and what better way than to help ultimately cure diseases like cancer,” he added. At the same time, Google is losing four of its best-known AI and engineering figures. Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le have left to establish Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation that will research advances in machine learning, science and engineering. Google will support the new venture as a founding investor and cloud partner, providing computing capacity and continuing to collaborate with its founders on machine-learning systems and infrastructure. Dean, who spent almost 27 years at Google, co-founded Google Brain in 2011 and later served as Google DeepMind’s chief scientist. He, Vinyals and Noam Shazeer had until recently co-led the development of Gemini, including Gemini 3, which was released last November and was widely viewed as having narrowed Google’s gap with its leading competitors. However, Shazeer left for OpenAI in June, while John Jumper, who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize with Hassabis, joined Anthropic during the same month. Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010 and continued leading the London-based laboratory after Google acquired it for about $650 million in 2014. Google later combined DeepMind with Google Brain in 2023, placing Hassabis and Dean at the centre of its response to the rise of ChatGPT.