Demis Hassabis hands Google DeepMind’s day-to-day leadership to Koray Kavukcuoglu
The 13-year DeepMind veteran will oversee Gemini model development, frontier AI research and product teams as Hassabis focuses on AGI, science and Isomorphic Labs
Hassabis will focus on AGI, science and Isomorphic Labs while continuing to advise Google DeepMind’s models and research teams.
Koray Kavukcuoglu is taking over the day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind, gaining responsibility for Gemini model development, frontier AI research, the Gemini app and developer teams as co-founder Demis Hassabis moves into a wider strategic role.
Kavukcuoglu becomes Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind while continuing as Google’s Chief AI Architect. He will report directly to Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
Hassabis will become Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet. He will continue to lead Isomorphic Labs and advise Kavukcuoglu and Google DeepMind’s teams across models and research.
The change removes Hassabis from daily operational responsibilities but keeps him closely involved in the organization he co-founded. He will work with Pichai on strategic and global artificial general intelligence matters from Google DeepMind’s Platform 37 offices in London.
In a message to employees, Hassabis connects the handover to his belief that AGI is approaching: “I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand.”
He adds: “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.”
Gemini 4 enters the leadership handover
Kavukcuoglu’s promotion is an internal succession. He has spent more than 13 years at DeepMind and is currently its Chief Technology Officer, a position he has held since January 2024.
Earlier roles included Vice President of Research, Director of Research and Research Scientist. Pichai credits him with establishing DeepMind’s deep learning team and contributing to work including WaveNet and DQN.
Hassabis describes Kavukcuoglu as “one of the world's foremost AI experts” and says responsibility for the Gemini models has already been with him and other leads “for a while.”
The employee messages also name Gemini 4 among Google DeepMind’s new models. No release date is provided, although Pichai refers to upcoming model releases and says the organization is seeing progress in areas where it needs to improve.
The scale of the operation moving under Kavukcuoglu’s leadership extends beyond model research. Pichai says the Gemini app has passed 950 million monthly users and that Gemma models have exceeded 900 million downloads. He also states that Google DeepMind’s Cyber model is live and that Flash is in high demand.
Hassabis will give more attention to Isomorphic Labs as part of his new role. The Google DeepMind co-founder also serves as Founder and CEO of the company, which is focused on drug discovery.
“I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health,” he states in his employee message, identifying diseases including cancer among the problems he wants AI to help address.
Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat form independent company
The leadership changes extend beyond Google DeepMind. Pichai says Jeff Dean and Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat are launching an independent public benefit corporation intended to accelerate discoveries in machine learning, science and engineering.
Dean has spent 27 years at Google, while Pichai credits both researchers with work spanning the company’s early search infrastructure and the neural networks used in modern AI.
The new company is not named in the announcement, and no launch date or investment figure is provided. Google will remain involved as a founding investor and Cloud partner, with plans to collaborate on a research framework for machine learning systems and related infrastructure advances.
