Google Puts Kavukcuoglu in Charge of DeepMind and Gemini

Google has named Koray Kavukcuoglu to run the day-to-day work of Google DeepMind, handing a 13-year veteran of the lab responsibility for its models, its core research and the Gemini apps that put the company's AI in front of users. The appointment completes a leadership reshuffle that has reshaped the top of one of the field's most closely watched groups in the space of a week.

Kavukcuoglu, previously DeepMind's chief technology officer and chief AI architect, becomes senior vice president and reports directly to Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai. His brief covers model development, frontier research and the Gemini application and developer teams, in effect the full path from laboratory to product.

Hassabis steps back, not away

The change follows Demis Hassabis's move from chief executive of DeepMind to a chairman role, along with the added title of chief scientist at Alphabet. As we reported last week, Hassabis is staying at the company and shifting his focus to long-range strategy and the scientific applications of AI, including his continued leadership of the drug-discovery venture Isomorphic Labs.

The reshuffle has not been entirely orderly. Over the same stretch of days, Google lost several of its most senior researchers: Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le left to found Discovery Loop, a startup automating scientific research in which Google itself took a stake. Reports describe morale inside DeepMind as strained, with the flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro still delayed as OpenAI and Anthropic press their advantage.

A steadying hand, and a question of succession

Kavukcuoglu is an unusual choice in one respect. He is an insider and an engineer rather than a public figure, known for foundational work on the systems that underpin much of modern AI. Google appears to be betting that a steady technical hand is what the moment calls for, with the company under pressure to ship a competitive frontier model. Some observers have gone further, reading the direct line to Pichai as a sign that Kavukcuoglu is being positioned as a possible future leader of Google itself.

For now his task is narrower and more urgent: turn DeepMind's research strength into products that can match rivals who have spent the summer shipping. The reshuffle gives him the authority to do it, and the results will show up in Gemini.