Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind to become chairman and Alphabet's chief scientist, while Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over as operational leader. Simultaneously, chief scientist Jeff Dean and three other senior researchers are leaving to found Discovery Loop, an independent AI startup backed by Google. The reorganization signals Google's effort to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic, particularly in AI coding agents, amid recent staff departures and low morale at DeepMind.
Demis Hassabis stepped down as CEO of Google DeepMind to become chairman and chief scientist of Alphabet, with CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over day-to-day operations. Google's chief scientist Jeff Dean, who spent 27 years at the company, departed to co-found Discovery Loop, an AI research automation startup, alongside former Googlers Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le. The departures reflect leadership turbulence at Google as Gemini 3.5 Pro falls months behind schedule and the company loses key researchers to rivals.
Four senior Google engineers—Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le—are leaving to found Discovery Loop, an automated research lab that uses AI to solve problems in machine learning, science, and engineering. Google is investing in the startup and providing cloud infrastructure, with DeepMind's Demis Hassabis stepping back to focus on long-term AGI strategy while Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over Gemini development. The departures follow earlier losses of key researchers to competitors and occur as Google consolidates its AI leadership structure under single oversight.
Google announced leadership restructuring at DeepMind, moving founder Demis Hassabis to chair and chief scientist role while Koray Kavukcuoglu, formerly CTO, becomes senior vice president overseeing day-to-day operations. Hassabis will retain leadership of Isomorphic Labs, Google's AI drug discovery subsidiary. The shift concentrates strategic AI governance under Alphabet while giving Kavukcuoglu operational control of DeepMind's research efforts.
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