Google reshuffles DeepMind leadership around Gemini and AGI

Google has announced a major leadership reshuffle at Google DeepMind, moving Demis Hassabis into a broader Alphabet-wide scientific role while giving Koray Kavukcuoglu direct responsibility for Gemini model development, frontier AI research and key product teams.

Demis Hassabis moves into an Alphabet-wide role

Hassabis will become Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet. He will continue to advise Google DeepMind and remain closely involved with the company’s AI strategy, while also continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs.

In his note to employees, Hassabis said the change is intended to give him more time to focus on long-term AGI strategy, science and the broader societal implications of increasingly capable AI systems.

Koray Kavukcuoglu takes operational control

Koray Kavukcuoglu, currently Google DeepMind’s Chief Technology Officer and Google’s Chief AI Architect, will become Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind and report directly to Sundar Pichai.

His remit will include Gemini model development, frontier AI research, the Gemini app and developer teams. Kavukcuoglu has spent more than 13 years at DeepMind and previously worked on research programs including WaveNet and DQN.

Gemini becomes even more central to Google

Google says the Gemini app has passed 950 million monthly users, while Gemma models have surpassed 900 million downloads. The company also says demand for its Flash models is strong and that additional model releases are in development.

Hassabis specifically referenced progress on new models including Gemini 4, although Google has not announced a launch date or detailed specifications.

Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat are starting a new company

Google also announced that Jeff Dean and Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat are launching an independent public-benefit corporation focused on machine learning, science and engineering. Google plans to participate as a founding investor and cloud partner.

Why Google is changing the structure now

The reorganisation separates two increasingly demanding priorities: operating one of the world’s largest AI product and model organisations, and shaping longer-term research around AGI and science.

By putting Gemini development, frontier research and product teams under one operational leader while giving Hassabis a broader strategic role, Google is tightening the connection between research, model delivery and commercial deployment.

Practical significance

Leadership changes do not guarantee faster model progress, but this reshuffle clarifies who owns execution across Gemini and who is responsible for Alphabet’s longer-term scientific direction. It also signals that Google expects AI strategy, product delivery and AGI research to require increasingly distinct leadership structures.

Google announced the changes in an official company post .

Source: Google