Google reshapes DeepMind leadership

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on August 6 that Demis Hassabis will become chief scientist of Alphabet and chair of Google DeepMind, while Koray Kavukcuoglu will take on day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind and Gemini development. Google said the changes were shared internally on Thursday as part of a broader push to speed product work while keeping Hassabis focused on artificial general intelligence and science. The same day, several of Google’s best-known AI leaders said they were leaving to start Discovery Loop, a new company focused on automating scientific and engineering research. Reports from TechCrunch, GeekWire and Quartz said the founders are Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le, all longtime Google or DeepMind figures. (blog.google) ### Why did Google split Demis Hassabis’s role? Sundar Pichai said in Google’s announcement that Hassabis had been spending more time externally and that he and Pichai had discussed a role allowing him to focus fully on “shaping the future of AGI.” Google said Hassabis will continue to lead Isomorphic Labs and remain involved with Google DeepMind teams as an adviser on models and research. (techcrunch.com) Demis Hassabis said in the same post that the company was entering a new phase in which frontier research, product development and scientific applications all had to move in parallel. Google framed the change as a way to separate long-range scientific direction from operational management of the lab and the Gemini product line. (blog.google) ### What exactly is Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over? Koray Kavukcuoglu’s Google author page identifies him as senior vice president of Google DeepMind and chief AI architect at Google, leading development of Google DeepMind’s generative AI models and their integration into products at scale. Google’s reorganization gives him responsibility for Google DeepMind, Gemini development and frontier AI research under the new structure announced Thursday. (blog.google) Google used the announcement to underscore the scale of the business Kavukcuoglu is inheriting. The company said the Gemini app has reached more than 950 million monthly users, Gemma models have passed 900 million downloads, and Gemini models are seeing strong demand from developers and businesses. ### Who left for Discovery Loop? (blog.google) TechCrunch reported that Jeff Dean plans to serve as CEO of Discovery Loop and is leaving Google after 27 years. The same report said Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le and Oriol Vinyals are joining him as co-founders. GeekWire described Dean as a 27-year Google veteran and said Discovery Loop is based in Palo Alto. (blog.google) Quartz reported that Google will remain connected to the venture as a founding investor and cloud partner. ### What is Discovery Loop trying to build? Discovery Loop said in statements cited by TechCrunch that it wants to automate the experimental loop of science and engineering, starting with machine learning research. (techcrunch.com) The company said its systems are intended to propose experiments, run them, evaluate results and iterate at large scale. (geekwire.com) Quartz and other reports said the startup is structured as a public benefit corporation. GeekWire said the company is beginning with a lean team and recruiting in Palo Alto. ### How does this fit Google’s current AI push? Google said in its August 6 post that it wants to “accelerate” work across its AI stack, citing demand for Gemini, product momentum across Search, YouTube and Cloud, and recent advances in robotics. (techcrunch.com) In Alphabet’s July 22 earnings remarks, Pichai said Cloud revenue rose 82% and that nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 were using Gemini Enterprise. (qz.com) The next milestone is operational rather than ceremonial. Google said Kavukcuoglu will now run Google DeepMind and Gemini development, while Discovery Loop is starting with Google as a founding investor and cloud partner and is recruiting its initial team in Palo Alto. (blog.google)