Google announced a significant overhaul of its artificial intelligence leadership on Wednesday, coinciding with the departure of its chief scientist, Jeff Dean, who is leaving after 27 years to launch his own AI startup. Dean's exit marks the latest in a series of high-profile departures from the tech giant as it navigates intense competition in the AI sector.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, will assume the new roles of chairman and chief scientist for Google's AI efforts. Koray Kavukcuoglu, technology chief at Google DeepMind, will lead the development of Google's upcoming Gemini 4 model, according to an announcement by Google CEO Sundar Pichai on X.
Dean is establishing a new AI startup named Discovery Loop, bringing along three other veteran Google employees. Google's parent company, Alphabet, has committed to investing in Discovery Loop and will provide the startup with cloud computing resources. Pichai stated that Dean is leaving on amicable terms, congratulating him on his tenure and his new endeavor.
This departure occurs as Google faces pressure to demonstrate the efficacy of its substantial AI investments, particularly in light of the leading positions held by OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude models. Google recently reported its first-ever quarterly cash flow deficit and projected capital expenditures of up to $205 billion for the full year, without providing an update on its Gemini 3.5 Pro model release.
Alphabet shares saw a 4.2% decline on Wednesday, reflecting investor concerns about the company's competitive standing in the AI race. Pichai acknowledged the need for improvement, stating, "We are committed to being at the frontier, and are super focused on the areas where we need to improve." He expressed optimism about upcoming model releases and the company's progress.
Hassabis, who co-founded DeepMind before its acquisition by Google in 2014, will continue to lead Isomorphic Labs, an AI drug discovery company spun out from Google.
Dean's new venture, Discovery Loop, aims to automate scientific discovery, a process he views as currently slow and resource-intensive. The startup intends to scale this automation to accelerate progress in areas such as drug discovery and clean energy solutions. The founding team also includes prominent researchers Oriol Vinyals, Quoc Le, and Sanjay Ghemawat.
In addition to Alphabet's investment, Discovery Loop is receiving seed funding led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Prior to this announcement, other notable AI researchers have left Google; Noam Shazeer departed for OpenAI, and John Jumper joined Anthropic.