Demis Hassabis steps down as Google DeepMind chief executive

Sir Demis Hassabis is stepping down as chief executive of Google DeepMind in a leadership overhaul at the UK-based AI research lab. Hassabis will become chair of DeepMind and take the new role of chief scientist at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, while chief technology officer Koray Kavukcuoglu will lead DeepMind as senior vice-president.

Hassabis, 50, co-founded DeepMind in 2010 and sold it to Google for £400m four years later. His work led to the 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry for breakthroughs in predicting and designing protein structures through DeepMind’s AlphaFold model. Alphabet, described as a $4.4tn (£3.3tn) company, closed down 4% on Wednesday.

Hassabis said artificial general intelligence was “close at hand” and that he wanted more time to focus on its broader implications for humanity. He will also remain chief executive of Isomorphic Labs, a drug discovery company spun out of DeepMind.

Several Gemini leaders are also departing, including Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, who plan to launch Discovery Loop, a startup focused on machine learning, science and engineering. The departures come as investors worry Google is losing ground to Anthropic and OpenAI.