Symbolic imageGoogle AI leadership reshuffled as chief scientist and three colleagues leave
Four senior Google AI researchers, among them DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, said on Wednesday they were leaving to found the Google-backed startup Discovery Loop. Minutes later Google announced new roles for Demis Hassabis and a new head of its AI lab.
What happened
- Hassabis gives up the DeepMind chief executive post, becomes chairman of its board and chief scientist of parent Alphabet.
- Koray Kavukcuoglu, previously technology chief, takes over DeepMind as Senior Vice President reporting to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
- Dean joined Google in 1999 as its 30th employee and founded the Google Brain unit in 2011.
- Alphabet shares fell four percent on Wednesday, after a seven percent drop following last week's quarterly results.
- Gemini 3.5 Pro, announced by Google for June, has been delayed and is still unreleased.
The view from outside
Bloomberg frames the reshuffle as a move of Google's AI leadership to California in the race against Anthropic and OpenAI. FAZ places it a few weeks after two other prominent Google researchers left the company.
What could happen next
- Open when Gemini 3.5 Pro ships and whether the delay has cost Google ground against OpenAI and Anthropic.
- Discovery Loop's focus, funding and staffing are not detailed; the New York Times reports Google is backing it.
- Investors weigh the churn against Alphabet's plan to raise this year's investment to 195 to 205 billion dollars.
- Unclear whether further senior researchers follow the four departures.