(Bloomberg) — For years, Demis Hassabis was the only executive to oversee a US technology giant’s artificial intelligence development from outside the country. Now, no one does.
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On Wednesday, the famed British computer scientist announced he was stepping down as head of Google DeepMind, part of a sudden shakeup of the artificial intelligence leadership at Alphabet Inc. After losing several key engineers, the company is consolidating AI efforts in its California headquarters.
That shift marks an end for Hassabis’s effort to keep his native UK as an AI development stronghold. Since selling DeepMind to Google in 2014, he fought to keep the London lab as an island of research, focused on creating machines more capable than humans, rather than commercial payoffs. But Google’s tolerance for an isolated, overseas lab wore thin, particularly after the arrival of ChatGPT and exploding competition in AI.
Hassabis is becoming DeepMind chair and Alphabet’s Chief Scientist, devoting his time to ensuring that AI’s next stage “goes well for humanity,” he wrote in a note to staff. Still, his reduced influence could have a ripple effect on the entire AI industry. Hassabis used his influence to emphasize experimental scientific research and the importance of AI responsibility, which might otherwise take a back seat to an agenda focused on products, profit and competition.
While nations outside the US and China have increasingly worried about ceding control of critical AI technology, Hassabis and DeepMind have helped Britain hold onto a tentpole position in AI. Hassabis was knighted in 2024, and people who know the founder describe him as deeply committed to the UK. He increasingly weighs in on AI policy matters and has attended political events like the G7 summit in France. In July, Britain’s AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, said his first call after getting a cabinet position was to Hassabis.
“Demis is a great example of what I think of as a ‘patriotic founder,’” said Ian Hogarth, an investor with venture capital firm Plural, who has chaired a UK government body on AI.
Yet Google recently moved a number senior leaders from its lab from London to California. That’s included Koray Kavukcuoglu, Hassabis’s successor, who plans to bring even more engineers west, Bloomberg reported. Many early DeepMind leaders also have left the company, including Hassabis’s co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman. John Jumper, a researcher who shared a Nobel Prize with Hassabis for DeepMind’s work on breakthrough research into proteins, announced his departure for Anthropic earlier this year.
Several people who have worked with Hassabis said he has deflected overtures in the past to shift DeepMind’s operations and relocate himself to California. “He just has this fundamental belief the UK can build the best AI companies,” said Frank Meehan, an early DeepMind investor and co-founder of AI startup Frontier/1.
With the latest changes, Hassabis has given up oversight of Gemini, Google’s flagship AI model, and said he will continue to run Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet subsidiary in London focused on AI drug discovery, and keep working on goals like building technology that can cure cancer.
London holding less sway inside Google could impact the city, where a number of startups and institutions have relied on DeepMind for talent and resources. “Reputationally, it’s potentially damaging to the UK,” said Derek Holota, a London-based founder of consultancy Commonwealth Marketing, which focuses on AI. Representatives for Narayan and the UK government declined to comment on Hassabis’s move.
Trained as a neuroscientist, Hassabis has repeatedly stressed the priority of applying machine learning systems to scientific fields. DeepMind’s work on AlphaFold, an algorithmic system for predicting the behavior of proteins, was considered a landmark achievement.
While Google has backed futuristic projects and non-commercial research, the recent cutthroat AI race has changed its approach. The company merged DeepMind with its California research lab in 2023, and has since focused attention on improving Gemini and its core products. The company has proved willing to spend on this AI strategy, buying chips and expanding data centers, in ways it never did for its famous moonshots, like self-driving cars and delivery drones.
In the second quarter, Alphabet posted a negative free cash flow for the first time since going public more than twenty years before. The company doesn’t disclose spending on its Other Bets — the non-Google businesses, such as Waymo and Isomorphic Labs — but has said that much of its capital expenditures this year, set to exceed $200 billion, will be on servers, networking equipment and data centers.
Meehan, the early DeepMind investor, said the company has drifted away from the foundational scientific research that Hassabis holds dear. “Google is not involved enough in all these areas,” he said. “There was a very strong focus on commercializing DeepMind.”
Hassabis had considered leaving the company entirely in the past. In 2016, he and Suleyman plotted ways to spin out their lab into a sort of public benefit corporation after disagreements with Alphabet leadership on AI governance, the Wall Street Journal first reported.
Hassabis told staff he will spend more time at Isomorphic Labs. Since forming in 2021, the division has signed partnership deals with major pharmaceutical firms and raised capital from investors outside of Alphabet. It has yet to bring an AI-designed drug to clinical trials.
“As you’ve heard me say many times, I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health,” Hassabis wrote in a note to staff published to Google’s blog. Alphabet has tried various efforts in healthcare over the years, with few major commercial results.
In December, DeepMind said it would open a new London lab in 2026 for developing AI in material science, another research area detached from Google’s bottom line. DeepMind hasn’t shared any updates on the lab since.
It’s unclear if Hassabis would be involved in the lab in his new capacity. Representatives for Google and Isomorphic Labs declined to comment further on his plans.
Google’s changes, including Hassabis’s new role, are “designed to focus key AI talent in their respective areas of strength,” Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Baird Equity Research, wrote in a note. Still, the analyst said it triggers concerns about “brain drain” at the company.
Historically, taking titles like chair and chief scientist, have been indications a senior leader is moving toward the exit. In 2015, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page formed Alphabet as an umbrella corporation, moving the day-to-day operations of Google off his plate and allowing the billionaire to pursue radically different technology businesses. He left the company four years later. Former CEO Eric Schmidt went from chairman to technical adviser before leaving the company. Jeff Dean, a Google veteran named its chief scientist a few years ago, said on Wednesday he’s leaving the company.
–With assistance from Jacob Reid and Shona Ghosh.
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