--- title: The next chapter of our AI momentum | daily.dev description: Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced leadership changes at Google DeepMind. Demis Hassabis transitions from day-to-day operational leadership to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-next-chapter-of-our-ai-momentum-3pd5wthym twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The next chapter of our AI momentum | daily.dev og:description: Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced leadership changes at Google DeepMind. Demis Hassabis transitions from day-to-day operational leadership to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-next-chapter-of-our-ai-momentum-3pd5wthym og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/3Pd5wthyM.png og:image:alt: The next chapter of our AI momentum og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The next chapter of our AI momentum **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced leadership changes at Google DeepMind. Demis Hassabis transitions from day-to-day operational leadership to become Chair of GDM and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, focusing on AGI strategy and continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs. Koray Kavukcuoglu, current CTO of GDM, steps up as SVP of Google DeepMind overseeing Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, and the Gemini app. Additionally, Jeff Dean is departing after 27 years to co-found an independent public benefit corporation with Sanjay Ghemawat focused on ML and science discoveries. Key metrics cited include the Gemini app reaching 950M+ monthly users and Gemma models surpassing 900M downloads. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Who is replacing Demis Hassabis as the operational leader of Google DeepMind? Koray Kavukcuoglu is stepping up to SVP of Google DeepMind, reporting directly to Sundar Pichai, in addition to his existing role as Chief AI Architect of Google. He will oversee Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams. Koray has been at DeepMind for 13 years and previously served as GDM's Chief Technology Officer, having led work on WaveNet and DQN. _Follow leadership shifts shaping Gemini's direction and roadmap on daily.dev._ ### What is Demis Hassabis's new role at Google? Demis Hassabis is becoming Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs, the company applying AI to drug discovery. He is stepping back from day-to-day operational responsibilities at GDM to focus on strategic AGI matters and will continue advising Koray Kavukcuoglu and the GDM leadership team. _daily.dev helps developers track how AI leadership shakeups affect Gemini's future._ ### Why is Jeff Dean leaving Google after 27 years? Jeff Dean, along with Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat, is launching an independent public benefit corporation aimed at accelerating discoveries in machine learning, science, and engineering. Google will remain involved as a founding investor and Cloud partner and will collaborate on a research framework for ML systems and related infrastructure advances. _Developers tracking major AI research talent moves can follow the story on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 384 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-09-14). **TL;DR:** The community is broadly skeptical of Google's AI momentum narrative, viewing the leadership reshuffling as a sign of weakness rather than strength — especially Jeff Dean's departure, which many see as a seismic loss. Demis Hassabis's role change is read as a sidelining, and the cited metrics (Gemma downloads, Gemini users) are dismissed as vanity numbers. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 30% mixed · 60% skeptical **The case for** - Google retains structural advantages: TPUs, data centers, the mature Google crawler, Google Books archive, and a 14% stake in Anthropic. - Flash models are competitively priced relative to rivals like Sonnet, which some developers find genuinely useful. - Koray Kavukcuoglu stepping up could bring more operational focus to Gemini model development. **The pushback** - Jeff Dean's departure after 27 years is seen as a major talent loss, with some calling it the end of a golden era at Google. - Demis Hassabis's move to Chair/Chief Scientist is widely read as being kicked upstairs rather than a genuine promotion. - Cited metrics (900M Gemma downloads, 950M Gemini app users) are criticized as vanity stats with no concrete competitive signal. - Google's core search product is seen as degraded by AI Overviews, creating a feedback loop of AI-generated spam. - Commenters note Google has consistently struggled to convert research talent into competitive products. - Some raise AI safety concerns, noting the leadership changes may weaken alignment oversight. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Deeply skeptical of the announcement's framing — Jeff Dean's exit is treated as a serious blow, Demis's new role as a demotion in disguise, and the headline metrics as hollow corporate spin. **Hottest debate:** Whether Demis Hassabis's transition to Chair/Chief Scientist is a genuine strategic elevation or a quiet sidelining from operational power. **Open questions** - Will Google's structural advantages (TPUs, data, distribution) be enough to compete without its top research talent? - What is the real story behind the absence of a Gemini 3.5 Pro release? - Can Koray Kavukcuoglu provide the operational focus Gemini development has reportedly lacked? - Is Google's AGI strategy credible given the departure of its most senior AI figures? **Highlights** > > 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. Oof. Good for Jeff and Sanjay (who just joined Twitter), bu that is a big loss for Google. Google stock is down 5%. It might not be much of an exaggeration to say these two are worth ~$200 billion. > — [xnx on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49184928) > For at least a year now the standard reflexive reply to “Google seems way behind OAI and Anthropic” has been “it’ll be ok, they’ve got Dean and Hassabis.” And now they don’t. What reason is there to be bullish about Google now? > — [Analemma\_ on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49186097) > Wow. Jeff and Sanjay both departing. Truly end of a golden era. There is an entire cohort of work-optional very senior engineers for whom one of the last reasons for hanging on was "at least Jeff and Sanjay are around". > — [gandalfgeek on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49187788) > Couple of things come to mind. One is that Web sites tend to actively fight AI companies' crawlers while actively courting Google's crawler. Another is that they hold the key Transformer architecture patent. If it is still relevant (which I'm not personally clueful about) and if they start enforcing it, then we may see a reprise of the situation where Microsoft made money for years every time an Android phone was sold. Regardless of that particular patent, it's probably safe to say they'll be better-positioned than anyone else if AI companies start lobbing patent nukes at each other. A third factor that shouldn't be discounted is that Google has access to warehouses of training data that other companies don't. Google Books alone is an Alexandria-scale archive that the courts forced them to keep to themselves. Those restrictive copyright decisions may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Google because no one else will have been able to scrape the data. > — [CamperBob2 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49186260) > Who knew the real revenue unlock wouldn’t be based on how much paranoid red-teaming the model underwent to resist users jailbreaking its ‘alignment’, and instead more on whether the model is post-trained to use ‘sed’ and ‘git’? Poor Gemini Scientist-heavy orgs that want to solve everything in token space may overtook tool use; meanwhile Anthropic has been super focused on MCP, Claude Code etc for over a year > — [firasd on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49186836) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49184755) · 201 points · 384 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#google](https://daily.dev/tags/google), [#google-gemini](https://daily.dev/tags/google-gemini), [#google-deepmind](https://daily.dev/tags/google-deepmind) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-next-chapter-of-our-ai-momentum-3pd5wthym) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The next chapter of our AI momentum","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-next-chapter-of-our-ai-momentum-3pd5wthym","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-next-chapter-of-our-ai-momentum-3pd5wthym"},"datePublished":"2026-08-05T17:12:16.084Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:28:08.276Z","description":"Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced leadership changes at Google DeepMind. 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