Hassabis hands over DeepMind
On 5 August 2026 Google published messages from Sundar Pichai and Demis Hassabis to employees: Hassabis hands over day-to-day operational responsibility for Google DeepMind and becomes its Chair and Alphabet's Chief Scientist, while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs. Koray Kavukcuoglu, until then DeepMind's chief technology officer and Google's Chief AI Architect, becomes SVP of Google DeepMind reporting to Pichai.
Why it matters
The lab's founder leaves its day-to-day running, and the development of Gemini models, frontier research and the Gemini app pass to someone who has been at DeepMind since its early years. This is a change of management, not an announcement of a new model; the document gives no reasons beyond those named in the messages.
What the messages say. Pichai: the new roles are meant both to speed up work at the AI frontier and to give attention to the future of AGI and science; Hassabis had 'long been discussing' with him a role giving his full attention to AGI; Kavukcuoglu, 13 years at DeepMind, started its deep learning team and led WaveNet and DQN. Under him: development of the Gemini models, frontier research, the Gemini app and the developer teams. Hassabis writes that he is handing over 'day-to-day operational responsibilities', will work with Pichai on AGI matters, will advise Kavukcuoglu and the GDM leads from the new Platform 37 offices in London and will speed up work at Isomorphic. The figures in the messages are Google's: the Gemini app at over 950 million monthly users, Gemma at over 900 million downloads. What the record does not claim. The messages give no day when the roles take effect, no reasons beyond those named and no assessment of results. The part of Pichai's message about Jeff Dean and Discovery Loop is in a separate record. Press reports of morale in the team or of model timing were not used.