Hassabis steps back to chair Google DeepMind as Kavukcuoglu takes day-to-day control

Demis Hassabis is stepping back from running Google DeepMind day to day to become its chair and Alphabet’s first chief scientist, the company said August 5, 2026. Koray Kavukcuoglu takes operational control of the lab.

The reshuffle installs Kavukcuoglu, a 13-year DeepMind veteran who was its chief technology officer and Google’s chief AI architect, as senior vice president of Google DeepMind. He will oversee development of the Gemini models, frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams, reporting to Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai.

Hassabis is not leaving. In the chair and chief-scientist roles he keeps a hand in Alphabet’s research direction, and he continues to lead Isomorphic Labs, the drug-discovery venture. The changes were disclosed in a blog post by Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai titled ‘The next chapter of our AI momentum’ — the same memo that announced the departure of longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean.

‘We have to accelerate all this work and stay focused on the AI frontier,’ Pichai said. ‘There’s never been a more important moment to shape the future of AGI and science.’

The move concentrates day-to-day authority over Gemini, Google’s answer to OpenAI’s GPT models, under a single research leader as the company races to ship frontier systems. It also thins Google’s bench of founding-era scientists in one stroke, pairing Hassabis’s step back with Dean’s exit the same day.

Whether the handoff steadies Gemini’s release cadence or slows it will show up in Google’s next round of model launches.