Overview
- On Aug. 5 Google announced that Demis Hassabis stepped back from daily management to become chair and Alphabet chief scientist while Koray Kavukcuoglu was promoted to senior vice president with direct reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai.
- Kavukcuoglu now has operational control of Gemini model development, Frontier AI research, the Gemini app, and developer teams and will make final decisions on those programs.
- Google delayed its flagship Gemini release after internal tests found weaknesses in key areas such as coding, a shortfall company leaders want the new operating structure to fix.
- Several high-profile engineers, including founders of Gemini’s original technical leadership, left to form Discovery Loop, a startup that reports having Alphabet as a founding investor and initial cloud and compute support.
- Employees raised concerns at an Aug. 6 all-hands that DeepMind’s autonomy is being reduced as some teams move into Google’s corporate structure and investors drove Alphabet shares down roughly 4 percent after the announcements.