Google Consolidates AI Leadership In California Amid DeepMind Shake-Up

Google announced a major leadership shake-up at DeepMind on Wednesday, sending shares down nearly 4%.

CEO Demis Hassabis is transitioning to chairman of DeepMind and chief scientist for all of Alphabet, stepping back from daily operations. Koray Kavukcuoglu, DeepMind’s CTO and Google’s chief AI architect, will now run the company’s AI research as senior vice president, reporting directly to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

Key Departures Include Jeff Dean

Google chief scientist Jeff Dean and senior fellow Sanjay Ghemawat are leaving to launch an independent public benefit corporation called Discovery Loop, aimed at automating machine learning, science and engineering. Other DeepMind veterans have also exited, including researcher David Silver, who started Ineffable Intelligence after raising $1.1 billion in seed funding.

Move Centralizes Talent In Mountain View

The restructuring aims to fix coordination issues dating back to Google’s 2023 merger of Google Brain and DeepMind, which left researchers split between Mountain View and London. Sebastian Borgeaud, who leads a major AI coding effort, also relocated to California. Google said London remains a key AI hub, with Hassabis staying there to focus on strategy.

Competitive Pressure From Anthropic And OpenAI

The shift comes as Google faces delays launching its top AI model and works to keep pace with Anthropic and OpenAI, both of which have attracted departing Google researchers. The company has pledged up to $205 billion in AI-related capital spending this year, while Google Cloud sales jumped 82% year-over-year to $24.77 billion last quarter.