Google LLC is reshuffling its senior artificial intelligence team, with its Chief Scientist Jeff Dean leaving the company after 27 years and Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google Deepmind, moving upstairs into a chairman role. He’s also becoming the new Chief Scientist of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc.

The changes were announced by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post, and caused Alphabet’s stock to decline more than 4% today.

According to Pichai, Dean (pictured) is departing Google to launch his own company together with senior Google fellow Sanjay Ghemawat. They’re both leaving on good terms, he said, and Google is investing in their new startup. “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,” Pichai said in the post. He said little about the nature of Dean and Gemawat’s startup, except that they’re trying to “accelerate discoveries” in machine learning, engineering and science.

Meanwhile, Google DeepMind will now be led by its Chief Technology Officer Koray Kavuckuoglu, who is being promoted to head of the AI unit. The changes come at a time when Google is trying to stay ahead of an increasingly competitive AI industry, where it competes with Anthropic PBC, OpenAI Group PBC and others in a race to develop more sophisticated frontier models. Kavuckuoglu, who will report directly to Pichai, is currently leading the development of Google’s next-generation Gemini 4 model.

Google is simultaneously pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the infrastructure needed to run both its own, and its customer’s AI models. In its most recent earnings report, Alphabet said it became cash flow negative for the first time ever due to its massive capital expenditures.

Hassabis was one of the co-founders of DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014. Since that time, he has been at the forefront of virtually all of the company’s work in AI. “I’ve decided that now is the right time for me to hand over my day-to-day operational responsibilities at GDM, so that I have the time and space to focus on the big picture and help influence what is to come to the best of my ability,” he said in a post on X.

Moving forward, Hassabis will work with Pichai on strategic and global issues relating to AI, he added.

Dean later announced the name of his new startup in a post on X, saying that it’s called Discovery Loop. It’s focused on AI for science and engineering, and it’s going to be set up as a public benefit corporation, similar to Anthropic and OpenAI.

Photo: Google