Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind to be the unit's chairman and will add the title of Alphabet chief scientist; GOOG drops 3%+

Demis Hassabis is leaving his role as CEO of Google DeepMind to be the unit's Chairman. Chief scientist Jeff Dean and another Google AI executive …

Axios 2026-08-05 Ina Fried

Context & Ripple Effects

Google DeepMind was created by combining DeepMind with Google Research's Brain team under Hassabis, a structure that gave him expanded influence after ceding DeepMind's former independence. The leadership change separates that research stewardship from day-to-day management.

Google has named CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu to lead Google DeepMind as SVP reporting to Sundar Pichai, while Hassabis moves into chairman and Alphabet chief scientist roles.

First-order effects

Koray Kavukcuoglu takes operating leadership of Google DeepMind and reports directly to Sundar Pichai, replacing Hassabis as the unit's executive leader.
Hassabis retains formal influence over Google DeepMind as chairman while extending his remit across Alphabet as chief scientist.

Second-order effects

Google AI's technical leadership will have to coordinate through a clearer split between Kavukcuoglu's unit operations and Hassabis's Alphabet-wide scientific role.
The transition reopens the organizational trade-off embedded in the DeepMind-Brain merger: centralized Google oversight versus the research autonomy that DeepMind previously valued.

Third-order effects

If Alphabet maintains this model, major AI labs inside platform companies will increasingly separate scientific authority from operating control, with corporate CEOs holding the final reporting line.
The arrangement makes operational AI governance a core competitive capability: research leadership can be preserved without leaving product, staffing, and execution under an independent lab chief.

The trend: Alphabet is formalizing a model in which AI research prestige and cross-company scientific direction are separated from the executive control of a central AI lab.

Discussion

@firstadopter Tae Kim on x
Jeff Dean and Demis Hassabis are the two most important AI executives at Google. Jeff is leaving and Demis is stepping down from day-to-day operational leadership at DeepMind. Game over.
@thezvi Zvi Mowshowitz on x
Big moves at Google DeepMind. Early read is this is Demis being ‘kicked upstairs’ and allowed to work on his special projects. Also Jeff Dean is stepping away. I wonder if any of this is related to Google's decisions on the DoW contract.
@natolambert Nathan Lambert on x
Major restructuring at Gemini (Dean out, Hassabis no longer CEO). This story will be studied forever as the incumbant with all the advantages not being able to get going. P.s. OpenAI accomplished their original goal.
@demishassabis 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
@sundarpichai Sundar Pichai on x
Just shared some changes we're making to the teams at @GoogleDeepMind. @DemisHassabis is stepping up to become Chair of @GoogleDeepMind & Chief Scientist of Alphabet, in addition to leading @IsomorphicLabs. He'll be able to dedicate his time and focus on shaping the future of
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
Announcing Discovery Loop! I am very excited to announce that, along with my longtime friends and collaborators @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix, we are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a Public Benefit Corporation whose mission is to automate machine [image…
@stevesi Steven Sinofsky on x
Congratulations on the truly generational accomplishments of @JeffDean , @GhemawatSanjay, and team. The fusing of academic pursuit with product development has been a brass ring of corporate labs for at least the history of computer science. There are many successful labs
@zeffmax Max Zeff on x
Google's Jeff Dean, Oriol Vinyals, and other execs are leaving to launch their own startup. When chatting to @StevenLevy for @WIRED, Vinyals gestures at the challenges of navigating google 👀 [image]
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
Our immediate order of business is to find office space, and hire an amazing founding team over the next few weeks. We want to create an awesome environment with a great culture of technical excellence, teamwork, respect, and ambition. We'll also start building our
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
We created a pitch deck to tell a handful of VC firms about us and what we were up to (a fun experience!). Here's a few slides about our background and some of the things we've worked on from the pitch deck (it was fun putting together the list of people in our teams who have [im…
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
Super excited to back this super star team at@khoslaventures on its quest for huge impact. Could be larger than the impact that Google had
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
Super excited to back this super star team on its quest for huge impact. Could be larger than the impact that Google had
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
Our general approach is to automate the experimental loop. We think this approach is broadly applicable across many different fields of science and engineering. We'll initially focus on ML research and engineering, but believe the approach can help with important subproblems in […
@sundarpichai Sundar Pichai on x
I also want to give a huge thanks to the incomparable @JeffDean after an incredible 27-year run at Google. He's off to start his own public benefit corporation with @Sanjay_Ghemawat focused on accelerating discoveries across ML, science, & engineering. @Google will support as a
@quocleix Quoc Le on x
Excited to co-found Discovery Loop with my long-time collaborators @JeffDean @Sanjay_Ghemawat @OriolVinyalsML . Our mission is to automate machine learning, engineering and science. Learn more at: https://www.discoveryloop.com/ ♾
@oriolvinyalsml Oriol Vinyals on x
Thirteen years ago, a quick email exchange with @JeffDean brought me to @Google. After an unforgettable journey from Brain, to DeepMind, and to @GoogleDeepMind, working on seq2seq or distillation, and co-leading huge projects such as AlphaStar, and Gemini, I'm saying goodbye to […
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
We are excited to back @JeffDean, @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @quocleix, and @OriolVinyalsML as they build what's next at Discovery Loop. They have spent decades pushing the frontiers of AI research and infrastructure from Google Brain to TensorFlow to TPUs. The next great frontier for
@sanjay_ghemawat Sanjay Ghemawat on x
I am excited to announce that I, along with my long-time colleagues (@JeffDean, @OriolVinyalsML, @quocleix), are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a public benefit corporation. We aim to automate the process of discovery and progress in machine learning, science, and
@michaelmclean.me Michael McLean on bluesky
This is huge news. Jeff is a titan. — Also a 'where there's smoke' situation for the haters. [embedded post]
@stevenlevy Steven Levy on bluesky
Here's a shattering Jeff Dean fact: Google's top scientist, along with Sanjay Ghemawat and 2 other top AI researcher are leaving Google to form Discovery Loop, a startup that hopes to automate the scientific method so AI can create breakthroughs in multiple fields. www.wired.com/…
@danprimack Dan Primack on x
The seed round was co-led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins, Doerr Capital, and Alphabet.
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
wow! my impression is that @koraykv is terrific but this is big news.
@koraykv Koray Kavukcuoglu on x
Thanks, @sundarpichai, honored to lead GDM into this next chapter. This is such a pivotal moment for us as we double down on our Gemini models, frontier AI research, and the products we build for our users and partners. I want to congratulate @demishassabis on his new role as
@officiallogank Logan Kilpatrick on x
@demishassabis ty for being the steward of AGI and pushing this forward, I am excited for the accelerate of science!!
@shiringhaffary Shirin Ghaffary on x
Major news this AM: Google is overhauling its AI leadership. -Former DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is moving to chair role -Longtime leadership legend Jeff Dean is leaving to do his own startup -Koray Kavukcuoglu is stepping up to lead DeepMind side https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@peterjliu Peter J. Liu on x
The magnitude of this is hard to understate. The Gemini leadership left (Noam left earlier), Demis is no longer head of DeepMind. More talent will be leaving. The best thing Google has left is TPUs and a stake in this company.
@astridwilde1 Astrid Wilde on x
a friend a few months ago asked me when i would sell Google and i told him when Jeff Dean left and Demis was no longer leading DeepMind i thought i was saying the equivalent of ‘when pigs fly’ but uhhh i guess buy Amazon?
@danshipper Dan Shipper on x
Tea leaves: In order to be competitive today Google needs to catch up on frontier coding. Demis believes different fundamental research directions (like world models) are more important to his long term goal even if they're less impt competitively today
@hkarthik Karthik Hariharan on x
For a hot minute, it looked Google was going to make it into the AI era with real competition to OpenAI and Anthropic. But it looks like the corporate shareholders and board aren't ready for a decade of high capex spend to keep with the other labs. This arrangement allows them
@scmallaby Sebastian Mallaby on x
Early reaction on @demishassabis stepping back: Demis has been playing the role of Google AI statesman for some time, and Koray Kavukcuoglu has been running Google DeepMind research for some time. So this is a formalization of something that had been happening informally. I
@chamath Chamath Palihapitiya on x
As said earlier, AGI is now at hand so these moves are logical.
@atabarrok Alex Tabarrok on x
Google down some $200 billion today, most likely due in part to Jeff Dean departure. Need to add this to my post on why CEOs are deservedly paid so much https://marginalrevolution.com/ ...
@southernvalue95 @southernvalue95 on x
Charitable interpretation for $GOOG would be: - Don't need to be on leading edge in consumer - GCP is on fire - Search remains strong - $GOOG and @sundarpichai are compute pilled ($) but not AGI/lab pilled (ie models will be commodity, compute/semis layer captures the value)
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
Full credit: @Google has been the real source of AI acceleration from @Waymo self driving cars when most people were skeptics to buying @GoogleDeepMind to investing heavily. Lots of research in universities but this team, including Sundar, Larry & Sergey, deserve full credit for
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
Google is restructuring its AI leadership as Demis Hassabis steps away from day-to-day operations at DeepMind to focus on AGI, science and global strategy. Hassabis becomes Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs. Koray […
@danshipper Dan Shipper on x
end of an era [image]
@shantanugoel Shantanu Goel on x
This might be a big stock drop moment for Google today. Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat moving on from the Big G!
@jacalulu Jaclyn Konzelmann on x
Excited for Demis to have the space to focus on AGI and scientific discovery - work that matters enormously and will change the shape of our future. The pace of change has never felt faster - what an exciting time to be building!
@gerritd Gerrit De Vynck on x
Sundar cementing centralized control of AI at Google. Demis's title was CEO of DeepMind. Now it will be led by a SVP and Demis is moving to the side to focus on scientific discovery
@suchenzang Susan Zhang on x
backdrop: kings all asleep/on vacation while minions slave away august 2024 - first big fail jan 2025 - only competent vp bails after one terrorist lead demanding an even bigger slice of pie breaks the camels back summer 2025 - second big fail + the king of terrorists climbs
@sebjohnsonuk Seb Johnson on x
Slowing down at google to speed up curing diseases at isomorphic GOAT
@marie_haynes Marie Haynes on x
“We have arrived at a pivotal moment in human history. I've been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand. It's critical that we collectively get the next steps right to ensure this all goes well for humanity and we usher in an
@tenobrus @tenobrus on x
demis is ousted as deepmind CEO and jeff dean + sanjay are leaving google to start a ~neolab. they're all being very careful to frame these as positive shifts. but there's no way in hell demis would have accepted this willingly, and there's no way Sundar happily accepted Jeff [im…
@benitoz Ben Pouladian on x
At Google, the infighting between DeepMind, Brain, Cloud, Search and the rest of the empire has been an open secret for years. My read: putting Amin Vahdat, the architect behind Google's TPU infrastructure, closer to the center is about streamlining the whole machine. Less [image…
@realnickmugalli Nicholas Mugalli on x
$GOOGL falls nearly 6% after DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis announces plans to step down This is what @firstadopter has been talking about. Google's culture is full of bureaucracy and inefficiency. Why would you let go of the only asset you've got? 5 top talents are gone now! Sad
@shakeelhashim Shakeel on x
Wow — @JeffDean is leaving Google. [image]
@phequals7 @phequals7 on x
buried the lede here Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat are leaving?!? [image]
@benitoz Ben Pouladian on x
Demis Hassabis moves to Chairman. Jeff Dean leaves to start a company. Google is investing in it. My guess? Compute scarcity and corporate politics are a terrible combination. In the AI race, talent follows compute. Always. Aged like fine wine $GOOGL
@kenwattana Ken Wattana on x
The amount of market cap Google just lost is what the market values Demis at so approximately $120B
@_arohan_ Rohan Anil on x
Pour one out for the big G, it's so over.
Joseph Michael Joseph Michael on linkedin
Demis Hassabis is stepping down from the day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind. — Instead, he will be Alphabet's Chief Scientist and focus entirely on advancing AGI and its societal impact. …
Derek Holota Derek Holota on linkedin
Hard to overstate the magnitude of this. — Demis Hassabis has long been a steward of the responsible pursuit of AGI …
r/technology r on reddit
Google chief scientist Jeff Dean leaving in AI reshuffle after 27 years at company
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
Tomorrow will be my last day at Google after 27 years, and watching it grow from 25 people to 190,000+ has been an amazing journey. Below is a note I shared with many people internally at Google today. An excerpt is: It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you and to help […
@gergelyorosz Gergely Orosz on x
Probably the biggest startup announcement of the year (decade?) in terms of the calibre of founders. If I had to name the top 10 engineers currently or previously at Google in terms of impact it would be the two cofounders (Larry and Sergey) and all 4 of these folks:
@andrewyng Andrew Ng on x
Congratulations @JeffDean, @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix! Knowing you guys, this will be amazing. Cheering you on and wishing you well on your important work!
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
Absolute A-list team, leaving on good terms with Google, but still another big loss for Google.
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
Jeff Dean is leaving Google after nearly 27 years, and it is difficult to overstate his impact on modern computing. He co-created MapReduce and Bigtable, helped build the infrastructure behind Google Search, co-founded Google Brain and played a key role in TensorFlow. He helped […
@scottew Scott Wessman on x
Underrated factor in AI right now: California prohibits non-competes, so AI startups don't need founders to sit on the sidelines for 12-24 months—a direct factor in people founding Anthropic, SSI, Thinking Machines, now Discovery Loop. Speed of innovation goes up.
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
One more fun slide from our pitch deck. [image]
@pitdesi Sheel Mohnot on x
Jeff Dean (30th employee of Google, there since 1999) is leaving to start a company with @Sanjay_Ghemawat& other Google AI leadership. He raised a round from Radical VC, Khosla and Google, size not reported $GOOG -4% today
@midnight_captl Nick Dorsey on x
Excerpt from the @WSJ article published this morning on Jeff Deans departure: >We wanted to build something differently than how things are built at Google right now >Google's infrastructure has very different requirements than the type of infrastructure we want to build for [ima…
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
Super excited to back this super star team at @khoslaventures on its quest for huge impact. Could be larger than the impact that @Google had when we backed them at Kleiner in 1998 and @OpenAI in 2018 at @khoslaventures
@sophiadew Sophia Dew on x
bring the benefits of science and technology to the world much faster act as a deeply positive, empowering force for humanity, delivering technology solutions that improve people's live on a global scale techno optimism core
@ziv_ravid Ravid Shwartz Ziv on x
Wow, Jeff, Sanjay, Oriol, and Quoc are leaving Google to start their own “automation” startup. All of them are true legends and It's definitely the end of an era...
@himanshustwts Himanshu on x
Sir Jeff Dean just announced the new company - Discovery Loop! Yet, another big signal for Autoresearch! [image]
@vin_sachi Vin Sachidananda on x
Jeff, Sanjay, Oriol and Quoc are giants in the field of AI and have contributed to most of the science that's advanced AI this past decade Very excited @radicalvcfund has co-led @DiscoLoopAI seed and looking forward to seeing heroes of mine build a generational frontier AI lab
@jonchu Jon Chu on x
Very excited to have @khoslaventures be a part of this. It's impossibly hard to convince one luminary to join a company. A company full of industry shaking giants will inevitably be earth changing 🙂
@radicalvcfund @radicalvcfund on x
Radical Ventures is very proud to co-lead the seed round of @DiscoLoopAI @JeffDean @Sanjay_Ghemawat @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix helped build the modern AI stack. Now, they are combining frontier AI and massive-scale compute to automate the scientific method itself. The future […
Rob Toews Rob Toews on linkedin
We at Radical Ventures are thrilled to be co-leading the inception round in DiscoveryLoop. — Jeff Dean, Oriol Vinyals, Quoc V. Le and Sanjay Ghemawat are giants in the world of AI. …
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
@demishassabis Congrats!
@scaling01 @scaling01 on x
it's so over OpenAI and Anthropic have a duopoly on AGI SpaceX AI and Meta have to lock in
@harrymccracken.com Harry McCracken on bluesky
Wow. I am not entirely surprised to see Demis Hassabis move to a role more decisively focused on frontier research. https://www.reuters.com/business/ google-shakes-up-ai-leadership-deepmind - chief-shifts-role-2026-08-05/
@scmallaby Sebastian Mallaby on x
To those who are selling Google today, a cautionary tale: In 2016 Google was thought to have suffered a blow to its autonomous car ambitions. Anthony Levandowski, a key contributor, quit and later joined the rivals at Uber. Fast forward to today and Google's Waymo cars lead the

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