Google reveals big shake up in its AI teams as Jeff Dean leaves and Demis Hassabis moves upstairs
Google LLC is reshuffling its senior artificial intelligence team, with its Chief Scientist Jeff Dean leaving the company after 27 years and Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google Deepmind, moving upstairs into a chairman role. He’s also becoming the new Chief Scientist of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc.
The changes were announced by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post, and caused Alphabet’s stock to decline more than 4% today.
According to Pichai, Dean (pictured) is departing Google to launch his own company together with senior Google fellow Sanjay Ghemawat. They’re both leaving on good terms, he said, and Google is investing in their new 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 in that,” Pichai said in the post. He said little about the nature of Dean and Gemawat’s startup, except that they’re trying to “accelerate discoveries” in machine learning, engineering and science.
Meanwhile, Google DeepMind will now be led by its Chief Technology Officer Koray Kavuckuoglu, who is being promoted to head of the AI unit. The changes come at a time when Google is trying to stay ahead of an increasingly competitive AI industry, where it competes with Anthropic PBC, OpenAI Group PBC and others in a race to develop more sophisticated frontier models. Kavuckuoglu, who will report directly to Pichai, is currently leading the development of Google’s next-generation Gemini 4 model.
