Hassabis gives up DeepMind's day-to-day — and Jeff Dean leaves Google after 27 years
Google announced on Wednesday that Demis Hassabis is stepping down as Google DeepMind CEO to become its chairman and Alphabet's chief scientist, focusing on AGI strategy, scientific applications and his drug-discovery spinoff Isomorphic Labs. CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over daily operations as senior vice president, reporting to Sundar Pichai. Jeff Dean, one of Google's earliest and most celebrated engineers, is leaving after 27 years to found Discovery Loop, a public-benefit corporation for AI-driven science, together with Sanjay Ghemawat — with Google investing and serving as its cloud provider.
Why it mattersDeepMind has been the engine of Google's AI comeback, and this is its biggest leadership change since the 2023 Brain merger. Hassabis saying AGI feels 'close at hand' while moving to a science-first role — and Dean spinning out with Google's blessing — shows the biggest labs reorganizing for what they see as the endgame.
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