Google Appoints Kavukcuoglu DeepMind SVP, Replacing Hassabis on Gemini; Shares Fall

Google's artificial intelligence unit DeepMind is undergoing a leadership change. Koray Kavukcuoglu, formerly chief technology officer and Google's chief AI architect, has been promoted to senior vice president, succeeding DeepMind co-founder and chief executive Demis Hassabis. Hassabis moves to the role of chairman of the organization. Kavukcuoglu will report directly to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, overseeing Gemini model development, frontier AI research, and the Gemini applications and developer teams. Google acquired DeepMind in 2014; Kavukcuoglu joined the team in 2012, before the acquisition.

OpenAI and Anthropic have released new systems in recent months, drawing attention with their advanced capabilities. Google has not launched a frontier model since early 2026. In November 2025, Google released Gemini 3, which analysts said pushed frontier progress. But in 2026, Anthropic's Mythos model and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 were released successively, and after Google launched Gemini 3.1 Pro in February, its products released during the year did not pose a challenge in the frontier arena. Google formed an internal team called 'Code Strike' to strengthen coding capabilities, which are crucial to developing general artificial intelligence. A Google spokesperson said the company has not deviated from its mission to solve the 'intelligence' problem, and that the path to general AI will involve multiple directions including agents, coding, robotics, and world models, citing DeepMind's releases in robotics, video, and computer use.

Kavukcuoglu had already been gradually taking on more of Hassabis's responsibilities, including guiding model development and hosting major Gemini releases. Over the past year, he moved from London to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. A Google spokesperson said the company remains committed to operations in the British capital. DeepMind was headquartered in London before the acquisition, and Hassabis continued to remain in the city after it became a Google unit; his presence has driven the development of the UK's AI ecosystem.

In July, it was reported that Google delayed the release of Gemini 3.5 Pro to improve coding and other performance, and Alphabet shares fell that month. Alphabet chief executive Pichai said on the previous month's earnings call that nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies are using Gemini Enterprise. Google's AI has been deployed in Android phones and in Siri and Apple Intelligence on iPhones.