Google AI reorg, in quest for AGI

Demis Hassabis on X: "I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life, and as we enter this pivotal moment, I’m stepping into a new role as Chair of Google DeepMind & Chief Scientist of Alphabet. This will allow me to focus on long-term strategy, and accelerating scientific breakthroughs, including" / X

 The next chapter of our AI momentum @Google

Google is restructuring the leadership at Google DeepMind (GDM) to better balance its day-to-day AI product development with the long-term, strategic pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (A[1]GI) and scientific breakthroughs. Demis Hassabis is stepping back from daily operational duties to become the Chair of GDM and Chief Scientist of Alph[1]abet, focusing on the broader future of AGI and healthcare advancements via Isomorphic Labs. In his place, Koray Kavukcuoglu is stepping up as Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind to oversee model d[1]evelopment and research. Additionally, long-time Google veterans Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat are leaving to start a new independent ML-focused company, which Google will back as an investor.

Key Points

Leadership Transitions

• Demis Hassabis: Transitions to Chair of GDM and Chief Scientist of Alphabet. Believing AGI is "close at hand," he is stepping away from daily operations to focus on the big-picture strategy for AGI to ensure it benefits humanity. He will also lean heavier into his role at Isomorphic Labs, aiming to use AI to cure diseases.

• Koray Kavukcuoglu: Promoted to SVP of Google DeepMind, reporting directly to Sundar Pichai. He will oversee day-to-day operations, Frontier AI research, the Gemini app and developer teams, and the development of upcoming models (including Gemini 4).

Departures of Google Veterans

• Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat: After 27 years of helping build Google's foundational search infrastructure and neural networks, they are leaving to launch an independent public benefit corporation focused on ML, science, and engineering. Google will be a founding investor and Cloud partner for their new venture.

Google's AI Momentum & Milestones

• The Gemini app has reached over 950 million monthly active users.

• Open-weight Gemma models have surpassed 900 million downloads, and models like Gemini Flash are in extremely high demand.

• Google emphasizes its unique position as the only company possessing the "full AI stack," from world-class compute infrastructure to cloud services, frontier models, and AI-first consumer applications.

The Focus on AGI and Science

• A central theme of the reorganization is a dual focus: maintaining aggressive momentum in the current generative AI race (like Gemini 4) while giving dedicated executive attention to the imminent arrival of Artificial General Intelligence and applying AI to global scientific challenges like healthcare.