Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping down from day-to-day leadership of the AI research lab he co-founded and has run since 2010, moving instead into the newly created role of chairman. He is also taking on the title of chief scientist at Alphabet, Google's parent company, while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs, the AI drug-discovery spinoff. The move is part of a broader reshuffle at Google's AI division as it comes under pressure to keep pace with rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Koray Kavukcuoglu, DeepMind's current chief technology officer, will take over daily operations as senior vice-president, reporting directly to Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai. Hassabis's new chief scientist title becomes available because incumbent Jeff Dean is leaving to launch a startup, Discovery Loop, focused on AI that can improve itself with minimal human input, taking several colleagues with him; Google will invest an undisclosed sum and serve as its cloud provider. The shake-up follows the recent disbanding of DeepMind's Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold team and comes as Google separately commits up to $40 billion (having already invested $10 billion) to Anthropic.