IT·Science News

Demis Hassabis steps down as DeepMind chief as Jeff Dean leaves to start Discovery Loop

Sir Demis Hassabis is stepping down as chief executive of Google DeepMind, The Guardian reports. The Nobel laureate will become chair of the London-based lab and take a new role as chief scientist at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, while staying on as chief executive of the drug discovery spin-out Isomorphic Labs. DeepMind will be led by its chief technology officer, Koray Kavukcuoglu, as senior vice-president. Alphabet shares closed down 4% on Wednesday 5 August.

Hassabis said artificial general intelligence felt “close at hand” and that it was critical that it “goes well for humanity”.

“I’ve decided that now is the right time for me to hand over my day-to-day operational responsibilities at GDM, so that I have the time and space to focus on the big picture and help influence what is to come to the best of my ability.” — Demis Hassabis, via The Guardian

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — the person and the pressure: Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010 and sold it to Google for £400m four years later. Veteran engineer Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat are leaving to launch a startup, Discovery Loop, as investors worry Google is falling behind Anthropic and OpenAI.
• Business Today — the setbacks: Kavukcuoglu will report directly to Sundar Pichai and oversee Gemini; Discovery Loop’s founders also include Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le. The Indian outlet linked the changes to a months-long delay to Gemini 3.5 Pro and reports that Noam Shazeer moved to OpenAI and John Jumper joined Anthropic.

What we don't know yet: how much Hassabis will still steer research day to day, and whether Gemini 3.5 Pro will arrive on a new schedule.