Google recently announced major leadership changes. Sharing details about the same, CEO Sundar Pichai informed employees that Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis will take on a new role as Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, while Jeff Dean will leave the company after 27 years to launch an independent public benefit corporation with Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat. In the email, Pichai wrote, “with today’s changes we’re going to keep driving our momentum,” describing the reshuffle as part of Google’s effort to advance its artificial intelligence strategy.The internal message also outlined a broader restructuring within Google DeepMind. Koray Kavukcuoglu, the current Chief Technology Officer of Google DeepMind and the company’s Chief AI Architect, will become Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind, overseeing Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, the Gemini app and developer teams. Pichai said the changes are intended to support Google’s AI roadmap while continuing work on artificial general intelligence (AGI), scientific research and future AI products.
Read Sundar Pichai’s letter to Google employees here
Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote:“We’ve made extraordinary progress to deliver on our full AI stack. We’ve got amazing talent, world-class compute, and products that bring AI to more people than any other company. And you saw the incredible momentum at earnings across all our businesses, including Search, YouTube, and Cloud. Our Gemini models are in high demand among developers and businesses, and the Gemini app reached 950M+ monthly users. Meanwhile, our AI research continues to drive field-defining breakthroughs (like last week’s Gemini Robotics advances).We have to accelerate all this work and stay focused on the AI frontier. At the same time, there’s never been a more important moment to shape the future of AGI and science. Today Demis, Koray and I are sharing a few changes to our Google DeepMind teams that will enable us to do both.AGI and science: Demis has described us as standing in the foothills of the singularity, and has been spending a lot of his time engaging externally. He and I have been long discussing a role that allows him to put his full attention on actively shaping the future of AGI. It’s work that is vitally important to Alphabet and humanity, and I can’t imagine a better person than Demis to do it. So, moving forward, Demis will become the Chair of GDM and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs. He’ll remain closely connected to Koray, Josh, and our GDM teams, advising across models and research. I’m so excited for Demis — this is truly his life’s work and purpose. You can read Demis’s note to GDM below.Google DeepMind: We are building strong momentum: Flash is in high demand, our Cyber model is live, and Gemma models have surpassed 900M+ downloads. We are committed to being at the frontier, and are super focused on the areas where we need to improve. I’m really excited for our upcoming model releases and the progress we’re seeing. We have to continue to move fast and with clear purpose here. Koray, the current Chief Technology Officer of GDM and our Chief AI Architect, will step up as SVP of Google DeepMind, reporting to me. He will oversee Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams. Koray has been at DeepMind since its early days, and over his 13 years there, he has started our deep learning team and led the way on breakthroughs like WaveNet and DQN. I look forward to seeing him lead GDM into this next chapter.Lastly, after an incredible 27-year run, Jeff Dean is at a moment where he wants to try something new, and we’re excited to support him in that. Jeff and Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat are launching an independent public benefit corporation to accelerate discoveries in ML, science, and engineering. Jeff and Sanjay helped to drive some of the most significant technology transitions, from our early search infrastructure to the neural networks that helped create the modern AI era. On a personal note, it’s been a privilege to work alongside Jeff and Sanjay, and I wish them all the best! We’ll continue to work with them as a founding investor and Cloud partner, and collaborate on a research framework for ML systems and related infrastructure advances.We are at a dynamic moment with so much opportunity ahead. With today’s changes we’re going to keep driving our momentum. Onwards!-Sundar”
