Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping aside

Demis Hassabis is leaving his role as CEO of Google DeepMind to be the unit's chairman. Chief scientist Jeff Dean and several Google AI colleagues are leaving to start their own company, which Google will invest in.

Why it matters: Google's AI organization is undergoing a profound change as the company struggles to keep pace with OpenAI and Anthropic.

The big picture: The moves are the latest in a series of departures and shifts at Google as frontier AI models have been advancing rapidly in recent months.

Driving the news: Hassabis will add the title of chief scientist for Google parent company Alphabet and also continue to lead Isomorphic Labs, the company's AI drug discovery spinoff.

• Koray Kavukcuoglu, the current chief technology officer of Google DeepMind will serve as senior VP of the unit, reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai.
• Dean, a 27-year Google veteran is starting Discovery Loop, an independent public benefit corporation in which Google will be an investor and cloud provider. Joining him in that effort are Google senior fellow Sanjay Ghemawat as well as Oriol Vinyals, a DeepMind VP and Quoc Le, a Google Brain co-founder.

Follow the money: Google's stock fell over 4% on the news.

• The stock had been on a tear, rallying 13% from a post-earnings report low.

What they're saying: Google aimed to put a positive spin on the exits and shifts, with Hassabis, Pichai and Kavukcuoglu all sharing upbeat memos.

Hassabis: "I've been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand," Hassabis wrote. "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."

• "With this backdrop, 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"

Pichai: "We've got amazing talent, world-class compute, and products that bring AI to more people than any other company."

• "We have to accelerate all this work and stay focused on the AI frontier. At the same time, there's never been a more important moment to shape the future of AGI and science."

Kavukcuoglu: "For Google DeepMind, our mission to build AI responsibly to benefit humanity does not change. My primary focus is ensuring we have the clearest possible path to delivering on our ambitious Gemini roadmap as we progress toward AGI. In today's rapidly evolving landscape, we must operate with absolute intention and velocity."

Zoom in: The role positions Hassabis to focus more keenly on the scientific aspects of AI development.

• The work Hassabis did on AlphaFold to predict 3D structures of proteins helped him and co-lead John Jumper win a Nobel prize in 2024.

Zoom out: In an interview with The New York Times, Dean indicated that leaving Google, a public company, gives him more leeway to focus on scientific discoveries associated with AI as well.

• "We might make decisions that are not necessarily in the company's purist financial interests," he told NYT.

What we're watching: The change comes after a groundswell of pushback from Google DeepMind employees and several high profile talent exits.

• Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro is months behind, with some company sources telling Axios that's in part due to low morale.
• Several top researchers, including Gemini's co-lead, have left the firm for competing AI labs.

This story has been updated with details throughout.