Google shakes its top to return to the AI race

BarcelonaEarthquake in the leadership of Google's artificial intelligence segment. Demis Hassabis, former CEO of DeepMind and Nobel laureate in chemistry, has stepped down as head of the British subsidiary to lead Alphabet's scientific research – the parent company of the well-known internet search engine – in the long term. Hassabis leaves his executive role at DeepMind, Mountain View's first major AI investment, but assumes its presidency. In a corporate statement, Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated that the move aims to "accelerate our work and maintain focus on the frontier of artificial intelligence".

The move comes at a delicate time for Gemini, the company's commercial AI model. In late July, Google launched several consumer models of its bot but kept the highly anticipated Gemini 3.5 Pro, the latest update to its flagship artificial intelligence, on hold. This was set to compete with the most powerful offerings from OpenAI (GPT 5.6, the AI that attacked a start-up a few weeks ago) and Anthropic (Fable 5). Although the company assured that the technology was already "being used internally," the postponement put the market on alert, given the possibility that the major American hyperscaler is losing ground to the competition in a key market segment.

The leadership change at Google, in this regard, serves to hand over the project's reins to Hassabis. Pichai explained in the internal memo: "Demis and I have discussed for a long time what role would allow him to put his full attention into shaping the future of AGI – artificial general intelligence.". As Chief Scientist, the London-based computer scientist will be at the helm of Alphabet's innovations in the AI sector.

It is worth noting that Hassabis himself has been a prominent voice in favor of technological regulations. In fact, he recently stated that artificial general intelligence, a system capable of matching or exceeding human reasoning capabilities, could arrive in "just three or four years." Faced with this possibility, the executive called for the creation of an international body of experts to establish global safety standards and evaluate the most powerful AI models before they reach the market.

In and Out

Hassabis' new role also involves moves to the top of the tech giant. In the same statement, Sundar Pichai confirmed that the multinational's previous scientific leader, Jeff Dean, is leaving Mountain View to launch a non-profit project named Discovery Loop, dedicated to accelerating and disseminating scientific and technological advances in the world of machine learning and other fields.

Along with Dean – one of the most prominent names in Google's history, with nearly three decades of experience at the company – other relevant executives will also be moving on, such as the senior fellow and leading theoretical computer scientist Sanjay Ghemawat. Catalan Oriol Vinyals, technical lead for Gemini, will also be moving on, as announced on his social networks. It is worth noting that Alphabet has supported the initiative as a founding investor and cloud computing partner, among other matters.