Google has announced a major leadership reshuffle at its AI division, with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis stepping down from day-to-day management to take on a new role as Chair of Google DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet.
In a message to employees, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Hassabis will focus on shaping the future of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and advancing scientific research, while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs. DeepMind will now be led by Koray Kavukcuoglu, its chief technology officer, under the title of senior vice president.
Sharing the news in a post on X Pichai said,” Hassabis will be able to dedicate his time and focus on shaping the future of AGI and scientific discovery.
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…
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) August 5, 2026
Hassabis said he has worked toward AGI throughout his career and believes it is now “close at hand”. He said stepping away from operational responsibilities will allow him to focus on the broader strategic direction of AGI and help ensure the technology benefits humanity.
“I’ve decided that 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,” Hassabis said.
I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life, and as we enter this pivotal moment, I’m stepping into a new role as Chair of Google DeepMind & Chief Scientist of Alphabet. This will allow me to focus on long-term strategy, and accelerating scientific breakthroughs, including…
— Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) August 5, 2026
Meanwhile Koray will oversee Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams. “Koray has been at DeepMind since its early days, and over his 13 years there, he has started our deep learning team and led the way on breakthroughs like WaveNet and DQN. I look forward to seeing him lead GDM into this next chapter,” Pichai mentioned.
Thanks, @sundarpichai, honored to lead GDM into this next chapter. This is such a pivotal moment for us as we double down on our Gemini models, frontier AI research, and the products we build for our users and partners.
I want to congratulate @demishassabis on his new role as… https://t.co/hneOQvxHK1
— koray kavukcuoglu (@koraykv) August 5, 2026
London-born Hassabis has emerged as one of the defining figures of the AI era. Google recognized his potential early as it acquired DeepMind just four years after he founded the company. In 2024, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing AlphaFold, DeepMind’s AI system for predicting and designing protein structures.
In 2015, the Financial Times named Hassabis as one of the “Top 50 entrepreneurs in Europe” and the following year as the “Digital entrepreneur of the year.” Science magazine named AlphaGo one of the “Top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2016” and TIME magazine recognized Hassabis as one of the “World’s 100 Most influential people” in 2017.
Google also announced that its chief scientist Jeff Dean and senior fellow Sanjay Ghemawat will leave the company after almost 27 years to launch an independent public benefit corporation to accelerate discoveries in ML, science, and engineering.
“Jeff and Sanjay helped to drive some of the most significant technology transitions, from our early search infrastructure to the neural networks that helped create the modern AI era,” Pichai expressed.
He also highlighted that the company will continue to work with them as a founding investor and Cloud partner, and will collaborate on a research framework for ML systems and related infrastructure advances.
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