Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis’s departure from the top job on Wednesday was at least a year in the making, according to two people familiar with his thinking, Semafor reported. Hassabis founded the company in 2010, before it was acquired by Google in 2014, and had been drifting away from day-to-day duties overseeing Gemini AI models, increasingly shifting them to Koray Kavukcuoglu, DeepMind’s chief AI architect.
Both sources said Demis Hassabis was not pushed out against his will, but struggled to find satisfaction in the role of a tech executive rather than a visionary scientist. Hassabis, who won a Nobel Prize in 2024, has recently been most engaged when discussing Isomorphic Labs, Google’s biotech spinout that he leads, focusing on using AI to address disease treatment, materials discovery and AI safety.
The leadership change, which coincided with the departure of Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, sent Alphabet’s stock price down 4% on Wednesday and raised questions about the company’s standing in the AI race, according to Semafor. Google DeepMind models are reportedly around six months behind the frontier on coding ability, an area consuming a large share of industry computing resources.
In its most recent earnings report on July 22, Google reported revenue up 24% to $120 billion, with cloud revenue rising 82%, though capital expenditures reached record highs, pushing free cash flow negative for the first time since its 2004 IPO. Recent corporate moves have been notable across sectors, with pharmaceutical giants also pursuing major consolidation, including AstraZeneca’s reported merger talks with Bristol Myers Squibb.
One Google executive told Semafor the management change was expected to accelerate AI development rather than slow it, noting Hassabis had become the public face of Google’s AI efforts but was not focused on the division most tied to its competitive standing. Alphabet Chief Scientist Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post that Google was “at a dynamic moment with so much opportunity ahead.”
Koray Kavukcuoglu is taking over the role vacated by Hassabis and will oversee development of the anticipated Gemini 4 model, according to Semafor. He joined Hassabis in DeepMind’s early days and studied under AI researcher Yann LeCun.
The change has renewed questions about Google’s ability to retain top AI talent, after the company recently lost researcher John Jumper, who shared the Nobel Prize with Hassabis, to Anthropic. Further departures could follow amid the broader shift affecting Gemini AI development and DeepMind’s leadership structure.
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