Google's AI reshuffle: Chief scientist Jeff Dean exits and Demis Hassabis steps down as DeepMind CEO
CNBC ● Covered by 18 sources
Google shook up its AI leadership: Jeff Dean is leaving after 27 years, and Demis Hassabis is stepping back from running DeepMind day-to-day. Alphabet shares dropped about 4% on the news, right as Google pours huge money into AI infrastructure.
Based on reporting by CNBC — read the original for the full story.
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Google just rearranged the top of its AI org chart, and the market didn't love it. Jeff Dean, the company's chief scientist and one of the people most associated with its biggest technical breakthroughs, is heading out the door after 27 years to start his own company. Sundar Pichai announced the changes in a memo posted to Google's blog on Wednesday, and Alphabet shares slid roughly 4% in response.
Dean isn't going far in spirit. He's teaming up with Google senior fellow Sanjay Ghemawat on a new venture called Discovery Loop, structured as a public benefit corporation aimed at using AI for science and engineering. Google is investing in the startup, and by all accounts the split is amicable. Pichai framed it as Dean simply wanting to try something new after nearly three decades at the company, and said the pair will focus on accelerating discoveries in machine learning, science, and engineering.
Meanwhile, Demis Hassabis is stepping back from running Google DeepMind day-to-day, moving into a chairman role there while picking up the title of chief scientist for Alphabet as a whole. In his note to staff, Hassabis said he wants space to focus on the bigger picture and help shape what comes next in AI, and that he'll work with Pichai on strategic, global matters. Taking over Hassabis's operational duties is Koray Kavukcuoglu, DeepMind's technology chief, who's being promoted to head the AI division and will report directly to Pichai. His first big job: leading development of Gemini 4.
All of this is happening while Google is trying to keep pace with OpenAI and Anthropic on frontier models, and simultaneously spending enormous sums on infrastructure to keep its cloud business humming. The company posted negative cash flow for the first time on record last quarter because of capital expenditures, and it's forecasting full-year capex of up to $205 billion. And yet the growth numbers tell a different story than the stock reaction might suggest — Google's cloud division grew 82% in the second quarter to $24.8 billion, outpacing both AWS, which grew 37%, and Microsoft Azure, which grew 43%. Pichai credited AI infrastructure demand and the company's own TPU chips for that surge, while also noting Google remains supply constrained even as it races to catch up in areas like cybersecurity with its newest Gemini models — Gemini 3.5 Pro, notably, is still delayed.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Losing your chief scientist and having your DeepMind CEO hand off day-to-day control on the same day sounds messy, but calling it a crisis misses what's actually happening — Google is trying to move faster, not slower, by putting a Gemini-4-focused operator in charge while its most senior thinkers go do bigger-picture work. The market's nervous twitch says more about investors' addiction to stability theater than about Google's actual AI trajectory, especially when cloud growth is outrunning both AWS and Azure. The real story worth watching isn't who has which title, it's whether $205 billion in capex actually buys Google the frontier lead it's chasing.”
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