Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced a major restructuring of the company’s artificial intelligence leadership, describing it as the beginning of the “next chapter” of Google’s AI journey. The changes are aimed at accelerating the company’s long-term AI ambitions while sharpening its focus on scientific research, product development and artificial general intelligence (AGI).
At the centre of the announcement is Demis Hassabis, who will transition from his role as CEO of Google DeepMind to become Chairman of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist at Alphabet. In his expanded role, Hassabis will focus on advancing frontier AI research, shaping Alphabet’s long-term AGI strategy, and guiding the company’s scientific direction. He will also continue overseeing Isomorphic Labs, Alphabet’s AI-powered drug discovery venture.
Taking over the day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind is Koray Kavukcuoglu, previously the lab’s Chief Technology Officer. He has been appointed Senior Vice President, Google DeepMind, while also assuming the newly created role of Chief AI Architect at Alphabet. According to Pichai, Kavukcuoglu will be responsible for bringing together Google’s world-class AI teams and accelerating the company’s efforts to build and deploy advanced AI models across its products and platforms.
Alongside the leadership transition, Google confirmed that several prominent AI researchers including longtime Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, AI pioneer Oriol Vinyals, engineer Sanjay Ghemawat, and researcher Quoc Le will leave the company to launch Discovery Loop, a new public-benefit AI research startup. Google Cloud will invest in and collaborate with the venture, which will focus on accelerating scientific discovery through artificial intelligence.
In his blog post, Pichai said the organisational changes are designed to ensure Google remains at the forefront of AI innovation as the technology enters a new phase of development. He noted that the company has made significant progress in recent years from advances in Gemini models to breakthroughs in scientific research but argued that the pace of AI evolution requires an even stronger leadership structure.
The announcement comes at a time when competition in generative AI continues to intensify. Google has been expanding its Gemini ecosystem and integrating AI across Search, Workspace, Android and Cloud while competing with rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta. The restructuring reflects Google’s effort to balance long-term AI research with the rapid commercialisation of AI-powered products.
Following the announcement, Alphabet shares fell around 4% as investors assessed the impact of the leadership changes and the departure of several high-profile AI researchers. Analysts viewed the move as part of Google’s broader effort to strengthen its AI strategy amid increasing competitive pressure in the industry.
Pichai described the changes as positioning Google for its next era of AI innovation, emphasising that the company’s mission remains focused on building AI that benefits users while advancing scientific progress.
