Leadership Changes at Google: Jeff Dean Departs, Demis Hassabis Becomes Chair of Google DeepMind

Leadership Changes at Google: Jeff Dean Departs, Demis Hassabis Becomes Chair of Google DeepMind

Significant personnel changes are happening at the top of the company.

— Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of DeepMind and will now serve as Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist at Alphabet (these are two entirely new roles for the company). In fact, he will no longer manage the releases of Gemini and other operational matters. In his new role, he will focus on strategic and global AGI issues. He will remain CEO of Isomorphic Labs and promises to intensify focus on it.

— Koray Kavukcuoglu, the current CTO of GDM and Chief AI Architect at Google, will take Hassabis's place. He will now oversee the development of Gemini models, frontier research, and the Gemini app. Demis will additionally remain as a consultant.

— Hassabis describes the current moment as the "foothill of singularity" and believes that AGI is close, so he wants to spend time not on operations but on ensuring that "everything goes right for humanity".

And one more sad (for Google) news: legendary Jeff Dean is leaving after 27 years at the company to start his own venture called Discovery Loop. Along with several other former Google employees, he will focus on accelerating scientific discoveries and ML research. Google remains an investor and cloud partner.