FT: Brin tightens grip on Google's AI push as Hassabis steps back from DeepMind

Google is overhauling its AI leadership, shifting day-to-day control of Gemini development away from Sir Demis Hassabis's DeepMind lab in London and back to Silicon Valley, where co-founder Sergey Brin has re-emerged as a driving force. Hassabis becomes Alphabet's chief scientist, freeing him for long-term research, while deputy Koray Kavukcuoglu now runs Gemini day to day. The shake-up reflects mounting pressure on Google to commercialise AI and close the gap with OpenAI and Anthropic, particularly in coding tools. Alphabet shares fell 5% on the news. No genuine South African angle applies to this story; it concerns internal leadership dynamics at Google's Silicon Valley and London operations..By Madhumita Murgia.Google is shifting control of its AI effort from London back to Silicon Valley, in a sweeping leadership overhaul that cements the returning influence of co-founder Sergey Brin.According to a dozen people familiar with the Big Tech group, including current and former staff, the changes represent a fundamental reordering of the company’s AI leadership, consolidating power in California as Google pushes to commercialise its Gemini models and close the gap with its rivals.Sir Demis Hassabis is stepping back from running Google DeepMind, the AI lab he founded, with day-to-day control passing to new senior vice-president, Koray Kavukcuoglu.The former DeepMind chief technology officer relocated from London to Google’s Mountain View headquarters last year and now leads development of Gemini from a desk beside Brin.The overhaul represents a seismic shift at the $4.4tn company, as commercial urgency eclipses the research-led culture that defined its DeepMind lab for more than a decade.Google faces growing pressure to prove it can compete with OpenAI and Anthropic in coding tools and enterprise AI, while contending with an exodus of senior talent and mounting investor concern over the cost of its AI push.People familiar with the reorganisation said the transition had been planned for several months, with Hassabis handing over operational responsibility for Gemini development to Kavukcuoglu as Google accelerated work on its flagship AI models.Meanwhile, Google co-founder Brin, who had largely withdrawn from day-to-day operations for several years, has re-emerged as one of the company’s most influential voices on AI strategy since the launch of ChatGPT, taking an increasingly active role in the development of Gemini.Hassabis, who sold DeepMind to Google for £400mn in 2014, will become Alphabet’s chief scientist and chair of Google DeepMind, allowing him to focus on long-term AI research while relinquishing overall responsibility for the business.While Hassabis is widely admired for his scientific leadership, several people familiar with Google’s thinking said senior executives had become frustrated by what they saw as his lesser focus on the commercial demands of the company’s AI business.His decision to make AlphaFold, the protein structure prediction system which earned him a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024, freely available became a source of tension inside Google, according to a person familiar with the matter. The project generated little commercial return despite the scale of its investment.A person close to the company disputed there had been tensions between Google’s leaders and Hassabis, saying the Nobel laureate had led the initial launch of Gemini, its most advanced AI model, and was invested in its success.“Demis . . . [has] a vision for research in AI that [he] can pursue more efficiently by doing research [himself] and inspiring others to follow, rather than by being their boss and telling them what to do,” said Yann LeCun, a leading AI expert and former chief AI scientist at Meta, who made a similar move away from managerial responsibilities in 2018. “You just want to focus on activities for which you have unique abilities.” Several current and former DeepMind employees said the reorganisation had sent shockwaves through the London-based lab, with some fearing it marked the end of the research culture that Hassabis has long protected. One former DeepMind executive at a rival company said they had already received calls from multiple staff who said they were ready to jump ship.The upheaval comes as Google grapples with a broader battle to retain senior AI talent. Jeff Dean, a highly respected AI scientist and 27-year veteran at the company, also announced his departure this week. Dean is founding his own AI start-up, Discovery Loop, alongside three colleagues and will have Google backing.Investors also reacted nervously to the changes. Alphabet’s shares fell 5 per cent following the announcements, underscoring concerns about the mounting cost of Google’s AI push and the pressure on the company to demonstrate it can translate its research strength into commercially successful products.DeepMind has sat at the heart of Google’s AI ambitions since chief executive Sundar Pichai merged it with the research division, Google Brain, in 2023. Hassabis was put in charge of the combined organisation, which went on to absorb Google’s remaining AI safety and research teams as well as the Gemini apps business.The expanded unit, which Hassabis described in a statement on Wednesday as the “AI engine room of Google”, became responsible for developing the company’s family of Gemini large language models and other frontier AI systems.However, people familiar with the company said, over recent years, Brin has also sought to steer decision-making behind the scenes on AI development, despite not having a formal executive position.Over the past year, Hassabis has devoted more time to Isomorphic Labs, the AI drug discovery company he founded, and to his new role as one of the technology industry’s leading public voices on AI.A friend of Hassabis said: “This is a great outcome for Demis. I know he is feeling relieved and excited about the future. It means he retains a lot of influence without having to move to the US, and frees him up to spend more time on Isomorphic, which he’s hugely passionate about.”Google enjoyed a resurgence last year with the release of its Gemini 3 models and the viral success of its Nano Banana AI image-editing tool. But people familiar with the company’s thinking said executives and board members remained concerned by its weaker position in coding models and enterprise AI, where Anthropic and OpenAI have established an early lead..Read more:.How Silicon Valley will eat its AI competitors in 2026: Parmy Olson.Hassabis told staff he was stepping back from day-to-day management in order to focus on the “big picture” and to influence the direction of increasingly powerful artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which he said “is close at hand”.Google executives have framed the reorganisation as a necessary step to accelerate product development as competition intensifies.“We have to accelerate all this work and stay focused on the AI frontier,” Pichai said in his announcement of the reorganisation this week. “With today’s changes we’re going to keep driving our momentum.”.© 2026 The Financial Times Ltd..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. 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FT: Brin tightens grip on Google's AI push as Hassabis steps back from DeepMind

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