Google has announced a major leadership reshuffle within its artificial intelligence division, Google DeepMind, appointing Turkish engineer Koray Kavukcuoglu as Senior Vice President to oversee the company’s next phase of AI development.
The changes were announced by Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai in a post on social media platform X.
According to Pichai, Kavukcuoglu, who previously served as Google DeepMind’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Architect, will now lead the company’s model development, advanced AI research, Gemini AI models and developer teams.
“Koray has been at Google DeepMind for 13 years and is a world-renowned expert in the field, starting our deep learning team and driving breakthroughs like WaveNet and Deep Q-Network (DQN),” Pichai wrote.
He added, “Google DeepMind is in great hands.”
As part of the restructuring, Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google DeepMind, will transition to the role of Chair of the Google DeepMind Board and Chief Scientist at Alphabet, while continuing to serve as the head of Isomorphic Labs, Alphabet’s AI-driven drug discovery company.
Pichai said Hassabis will concentrate on advancing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and accelerating scientific discovery—two areas Alphabet considers central to the company’s long-term vision.
According to the Alphabet CEO, Hassabis’ new responsibilities will focus on “shaping the future of AGI and scientific discovery,” reflecting the company’s commitment to developing more capable AI systems and expanding their applications across science and technology.
The leadership changes come as Google continues to intensify its investment in artificial intelligence amid increasing global competition in the rapidly evolving AI industry.
