Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind to become the unit’s chairman, a shift announced on August 5 that marks a major leadership change at the company’s AI division as it faces mounting competitive pressure from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Hassabis, a Nobel Prize winner for his work on AlphaFold, will take on a new role as chief scientist for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs, the firm’s AI drug discovery spinoff. Koray Kavukcuoglu, the current chief technology officer of Google DeepMind, will become senior vice president and take over day-to-day leadership of the unit, reporting directly to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
The announcement coincided with news that Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist and a 27-year company veteran, is leaving to start Discovery Loop, an independent public benefit corporation focused on using AI to automate scientific research. Joining Dean are Google senior fellow Sanjay Ghemawat, DeepMind VP Oriol Vinyals, and Google Brain co-founder Quoc Le. Google will invest in and serve as a cloud provider for the new company.
Google’s stock fell more than 4% on the news, a sharp reversal after the company’s shares had rallied 13% from a post-earnings low. The departures underscore deepening challenges at Google’s AI division, which has been losing top talent to rivals for months.
In his memo, Hassabis stated: “I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand. It’s critical that we collectively get the next steps right to ensure this all goes well for humanity and we usher in an incredible new age of discovery and wonder.” He added that stepping back from day-to-day operations would give him “the time and space to focus on the big picture.”
The leadership shakeup reflects mounting internal friction at Google DeepMind. According to conversations with current and former employees reported by Axios in late July, poor morale is contributing to significant delays in model releases, with Gemini 3.5 Pro running months behind schedule. Several top researchers, including Noam Shazeer, co-lead of Gemini, have departed for OpenAI, and John Jumper, a Nobel Prize winner, left for Anthropic in June.
Employee departures have been tied to multiple factors, including burnout over Google’s April 2026 deal with the Pentagon that allows the military to use its AI technology. Alex Turner, a former research scientist at DeepMind, resigned specifically over the military contract, telling Axios that CEO Hassabis lacks the consistent internal presence that competing AI leaders Sam Altman and Dario Amodei maintain with their teams.
Google has disputed claims that morale problems are driving model shortfalls or significant attrition, stating that its AI talent retention for the first half of 2026 is better than the prior year and that more than 90% of candidates offered AI roles accept positions. The company also emphasized its strong roadmap and demand for its models.
Kavukcuoglu’s memo stressed that DeepMind’s mission “to build AI responsibly to benefit humanity does not change,” and that his focus is “ensuring we have the clearest possible path to delivering on our ambitious Gemini roadmap as we progress toward AGI.”
The moves come as Google faces intensifying competition in the AI race. OpenAI and Anthropic have released models that rank higher on industry leaderboards, and the company’s free cash flow turned negative in its latest quarter, driven largely by a projected $190 billion in AI spending this year. While Google’s cloud revenue grew 82%, search revenue came in slightly below Wall Street expectations, raising investor concerns about the return on its massive AI investments.
Sources
- Axios — Details on Hassabis stepping down, Kavukcuoglu’s promotion, Jeff Dean’s departure to start Discovery Loop, stock decline, and morale issues at DeepMind
- Gizmodo — Confirmation of Hassabis’s new role as chief scientist for Alphabet and continuation of Isomorphic Labs leadership
- 9to5Google — Announcement of leadership changes by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
- LinkedIn — Confirmation of Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over as senior VP reporting to Sundar Pichai
- Reuters — Reporting on Jeff Dean and other researchers leaving to found new startup; departures of star researchers to AI rivals
