DeepMind<\/a> in 2010 before Google acquired the company in 2014, said his new role would allow him to focus more on artificial general intelligence (AGI) research and its impact on society.<\/p>\nAlphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Hassabis had been preparing for a role that would give him more time to focus on AGI.<\/p>\n
“[Hassabis] and I have been long discussing a role that allows him to put his full attention on actively shaping the future of \u2060AGI,” Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai said in a separate companywide memo. “It\u2019s work that is vitally important to Alphabet and humanity, and I can\u2019t imagine a better person than Demis to do it.”<\/p>\n
Hassabis will also continue his work with Isomorphic Labs, the drug discovery company he founded after it separated from DeepMind.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ve always \u2060believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health,” he said in his memo. “It\u2019s time for AI to prove its unequivocal value to the world, and what better way to demonstrate that than to help finally cure diseases like cancer.”<\/p>\n
Jeff Dean leaves Google with senior engineers<\/p>\n
Jeff Dean, one of Google\u2019s most recognised AI researchers, has left the company alongside Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le to create Discovery Loop.<\/p>\n
The new startup will focus on research breakthroughs in machine learning, science and engineering. It will operate as a public benefit corporation.<\/p>\n
Google did not explain what led to the departures or whether they were connected to the leadership changes.<\/p>\n
Discovery Loop has received investment from Google and will also work with Google Cloud, which will provide computing capacity for the startup.<\/p>\n
Dean and Hassabis were among Google\u2019s most influential AI leaders for years. Dean co-founded Google Brain in 2011, while Hassabis built DeepMind into one of the world\u2019s leading AI research organisations.<\/p>\n
Google later merged DeepMind and Google Brain in 2023 after OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT accelerated competition in generative AI. Hassabis became CEO of the combined unit, while Dean took the role of chief scientist.<\/p>\n
The leadership changes come as Google works on its next major AI model, Gemini 4, which has not yet been released despite an earlier target for a June launch.<\/p>\n
OpenAI recently hired Noam Shazeer, a former Google researcher who helped lead Gemini development. Anthropic also recruited John Jumper, a DeepMind researcher who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize with Hassabis.<\/p>\n
Google had earlier released Gemini 3, which helped narrow the gap with leading AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. However, competition has increased as companies develop faster and cheaper AI models, including open-source systems from China.<\/p>\n
At Google\u2019s annual developer conference in May, company executives highlighted Gemini\u2019s cost advantages rather than focusing only on its performance against competitors.<\/p>\n
Under his new position, Hassabis will spend more time on long-term AI research, while Kavukcuoglu will oversee Google DeepMind\u2019s operations, including Gemini development, frontier AI research and the Gemini app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google parent company Alphabet has announced some leadership changes at its AI division, with Demis Hassabis stepping away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[309,313,5044,980,3687,132,7543,1162,186,65311,40697],"class_list":["post-130562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-google","tag-business","tag-cybersecurity","tag-deepmind","tag-economy","tag-fintech","tag-google","tag-google-deepmind","tag-startups","tag-tech-news","tag-techeconomy","tag-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}