Google has announced its largest AI leadership shake-up to date, with DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis stepping back from day-to-day operations to focus on long-term research and artificial general intelligence, while DeepMind's current CTO, Koray Kavukcuoglu, takes over running the division. At the same time, Jeff Dean, a 27-year Google veteran and the company's 30th employee, is leaving to launch a new AI start-up alongside three other senior researchers, in what current and former staff describe as a sign of deeper tensions within Google's AI operation.

Sources close to the company suggest the changes reflect internal pressure to move faster on shipping AI products, amid concerns that Google, while ahead of rivals such as Meta, Amazon and Apple, still lags behind OpenAI and Anthropic on frontier models. One current employee, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, warned that Dean's exit represented a "brain drain" that risked producing "mediocrity". Both Hassabis and chief executive Sundar Pichai issued statements framing the reshuffle positively, with Pichai stressing the need to "move fast and with clear purpose" and Hassabis describing a "next chapter" for the company.