Google DeepMind Names Koray Kavukcuoglu as New AI Chief

Google has reshuffled its AI leadership, naming Koray Kavukcuoglu as the new head of DeepMind as the search giant races to close the frontier gap with OpenAI and Anthropic.

Kavukcuoglu, who joined DeepMind in 2012 before Google's acquisition and most recently served as the unit's CTO and Alphabet's chief AI architect, will now report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai. He replaces DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, who steps into a chairman role and becomes Alphabet's chief scientist, focusing on longer-term research and the societal implications of AGI.

What Happened

The leadership change, announced by Pichai in a company memo, puts Kavukcuoglu in charge of Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams — consolidating model, product, and developer efforts under one executive.

This organizational structure "is how a company organizes a product group rather than a lab," said Brian Hopkins, VP at Forrester. "This is something that Google knows how to do much better than OpenAI or Anthropic."

The move comes as Google faces pressure to regain momentum after a quiet 2026. Following the well-received Gemini 3 in November 2025, Google hasn't shipped a competitive frontier model since Gemini 3.1 Pro in February. Meanwhile, Anthropic's Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 have pulled ahead.

Why It Matters

The reshuffle signals a shift in Google's AI strategy — from research-first to execution-focused. "Expect faster releases, more experimentation and an emphasis on developing to a product roadmap," said Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Kavukcuoglu's immediate challenge: ship Gemini 3.5 Pro, which was delayed in July reportedly to improve coding capabilities. Nick Patience, AI lead at the Futurum Group, told CNBC the new chief must "prove it wasn't a one-off by maintaining a predictable release cadence" and "rebuild the coding and pretraining expertise that walked out the door."

Coding has emerged as the decisive frontier battleground. Malik Ahmed Khan, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said OpenAI and Anthropic are "miles ahead" of Google in coding — a gap Google assembled an internal "Code Strike" team to address.

The reshuffle follows the departure of Google chief scientist Jeff Dean after 27 years, alongside several senior researchers leaving for startups. Kavukcuoglu, described as part of "DeepMind's old guard," now inherits both the technical and talent challenge.