The Google AI leadership reshuffle marks a new era for DeepMind as Demis Hassabis shifts roles and Jeff Dean leaves Alphabet.
Google is restructuring its AI division, marked by the departure of Chief Scientist Jeff Dean after 27 years with the company.
According to an internal memo from CEO Sundar Pichai published on Google’s blog, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis will transition to Chairman of the AI unit while stepping into the role of Chief Scientist for parent company Alphabet.
Alphabet shares fell roughly 4% following the announcement.
Dean, an AI pioneer credited with powering some of Google’s most critical technical breakthroughs, is leaving to launch a new company with Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat. A spokesperson confirmed the departure is amicable, with Google participating as an investor in the startup.
“After an incredible 27-year run, Jeff Dean is at a moment where he wants to try something new, and we’re excited to support him,” Pichai noted in the post, adding that Dean and Ghemawat will focus on accelerating machine learning breakthroughs across science and engineering.
The restructuring which also promotes former DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu to head the AI division comes as Google navigates an intense AI race. The search giant is striving to match rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic in frontier model development while simultaneously pouring capital into infrastructure to support cloud clients and internal workloads.
In the latest quarter, Google turned cash flow negative for the first time on record due to massive capital expenditures, even as full-year capex forecasts reached up to $205 billion. Koray Kavukcuoglu, reporting directly to Pichai, will now spearhead the development of Gemini 4, Google’s next-generation AI model.
Demis Hassabis, who co-founded DeepMind and joined Google following its 2014 acquisition, has led nearly all of Alphabet’s foundational AI efforts in recent years.
“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,” Hassabis wrote in a note to employees, adding that he will collaborate with Pichai on strategic global AI initiatives.
Meanwhile, in a follow-up post on X, Dean revealed his new startup will be named Discovery Loop. Organized as a public benefit corporation, the company will focus on applying AI to science and engineering challenges.
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From a growth perspective, Google continues to perform strongly in AI. Driven by Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud is expanding at a significantly faster rate than market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
In the second quarter, Google Cloud revenue jumped 82% to $24.8 billion, outstripping AWS’s 37% revenue growth and Azure’s 43% gain over the same period.
On the earnings call, Pichai attributed cloud expansion to surging demand for AI infrastructure and enterprise solutions, bolstered by strong adoption of Google’s proprietary Tensor Processing Units (TPUs).
The report arrived a day after Google unveiled three new Gemini models including a direct challenge to Anthropic’s cybersecurity capabilities even as the company continues to delay the release of Gemini 3.5 Pro.
“Demand for our models is translating into strong token usage across developers and enterprise customers,” Pichai noted during the earnings call. “We continue to be supply constrained, which is a clear sign of momentum and rapid adoption.”
