Google announced a leadership change at Google DeepMind on August 5, 2026: Demis Hassabis is handing over day-to-day operations of the lab to become Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, Koray Kavukcuoglu becomes Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind, and Jeff Dean is leaving Google after 27 years. The changes were set out in a post signed by Sundar Pichai and Demis Hassabis on Google’s blog.
On this page
Who does what now
| Person | New role, per Google |
|---|---|
| Demis Hassabis | Chair of Google DeepMind; Chief Scientist of Alphabet; continues to lead Isomorphic Labs |
| Koray Kavukcuoglu | Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind, reporting to Sundar Pichai; continues as Chief AI Architect of Google |
| Jeff Dean | Leaves Google after 27 years to start an independent public benefit corporation with Sanjay Ghemawat |
Hassabis explained the move in the post: “I’ve decided that now is the right time for me to hand over my day-to-day operational responsibilities at GDM, so that I have the time and space to focus on the big picture.”
Kavukcuoglu takes on the parts of the organization that build and ship Google’s models. According to the post, he will oversee Gemini model development, frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams.
Jeff Dean’s new company
“After an incredible 27-year run, Jeff Dean is at a moment where he wants to try something new,” the post says. Dean and Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat are launching an independent public benefit corporation “to accelerate discoveries in ML, science, and engineering.” Google says it will be a founding investor and the company’s Cloud partner.
The numbers Google cited
The post paired the changes with two adoption figures:
- the Gemini app has more than 950 million monthly users;
- Gemma models have passed 900 million downloads.
What it changes
The restructuring separates Google DeepMind’s operating leadership from its scientific leadership. Day-to-day responsibility for Gemini models, frontier research and the Gemini app and developer teams sits with Kavukcuoglu, who reports directly to Pichai, while Hassabis keeps the chair of the lab, a chief scientist role across Alphabet and his role at Isomorphic Labs. Dean leaves Google, but Google stays connected to his new company as a founding investor and Cloud partner.
Google’s Gemini and Gemma releases are listed in our AI model release timeline, and the lab’s profile is in AI companies.
