Google announced a significant reshaping of its top AI leadership in August 2026, with Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis moving into a new role and longtime Google engineer Jeff Dean leaving to start an independent company.
Hassabis will become chair of Google DeepMind and chief scientist at Alphabet, CEO Sundar Pichai announced. He will step back from day-to-day leadership of DeepMind but will continue to head Alphabet’s Isomorphic Labs, the AI-driven drug development unit. Hassabis said he will “continue to work closely with Sundar on strategic and global AGI matters” and advise DeepMind’s leadership team.
Koray Kavukcuoglu, formerly DeepMind’s chief technology officer, will take over as Google’s SVP of DeepMind, reporting directly to Pichai. Kavukcuoglu will also retain his title as Google’s chief AI architect.
In a separate departure, Jeff Dean — Google’s 30th employee and chief scientist of Google DeepMind — is leaving the company alongside Google Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat. The two are founding Discovery Loop, an AI-focused public benefit corporation. Google will serve as a founding investor in the new venture. Discovery Loop describes its mission as “building AI solutions that can automatically solve important problems in machine learning, science, and engineering.”
Hassabis framed his own shift as a move toward applying AI to human health. “It’s 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,” he wrote in a message to staff.
The changes represent a broad restructuring at the top of Google’s AI operations, redistributing responsibilities across several senior figures at a moment when the company is heavily invested in AI development across its products and research divisions.
Source: The Verge