Google parent company Alphabet on Wednesday announced a leadership overhaul of its AI division, with AI chief Demis Hassabis leaving his main managerial role and as several leaders of its Gemini model, including veteran engineer Jeff Dean, left the company to launch a startup called Discovery Loop. The shake-up comes during a pivotal juncture for Google DeepMind: the flagship version of its latest Gemini model remains unreleased despite a planned June launch, sparking investor and industry concerns that Google is falling behind its rivals Anthropic and OpenAI, each of which scooped up a star Google AI staffer this summer.

Gemini co-lead Oriol Vinyals also departing

oogle's AI organization is undergoing a profound change as the company struggles to keep pace with OpenAI and Anthropic.

Google's AI division sees a significant leadership overhaul and key departures. Demis Hassabis moves to chief scientist while Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over daily operations.…

Some of Google’s top researchers are leaving as well.

Alphabet revamps its AI leadership as Demis Hassabis becomes chief scientist, Jeff Dean exits and Google faces rising AI competition.