Google’s AI godfathers are logging off

TL;DR: Some of Google’s brightest minds in AI have headed for the exits in the last few months—including two big shakeups yesterday. This could all be a symptom of a company that now appears less interested in bleeding-edge AI research, and more in selling Gemini seats.

What happened: Google dropped two bombshells yesterday. The first: Jeff Dean—the firm’s chief scientist and a 27-year company veteran—is leaving to start his own company. And Demis Hassabis, who co-founded the cutting-edge AI lab DeepMind in 2010, is stepping down as CEO to become the division’s chair and Alphabet’s chief scientist, which will mean less day-to-day management.

This latest shakeup caps a brutal few months of departures for Google, including Gemini’s co-lead Noam Shazeer announcing in June that he’s off to OpenAI. Shazeer is co-author of the paper that invented the transformer behind modern LLMs—the “T” in ChatGPT.

Some behind-the-scenes tea: The one-two punch yesterday shocked the wider tech industry, but apparently not people inside Google, per tech reporter Alex Heath. Hassabis started taking a step back at least a year ago, according to Semafor, and “struggled to get satisfaction out of being in the role of a tech executive, rather than a visionary scientist.”

There are also multiple reports of falling morale: CNBC notes that Google’s researchers are frustrated by the company selling precious compute to other AI labs like Anthropic, limiting the pursuit of their own projects. Insiders told Axios that the vibes are bad enough that they’re delaying model releases.

From moonshots to Gemini licenses: Lately, Google has focused on growing its Cloud business, which includes Gemini Enterprise—something CEO Sundar Pichai boasts that 90% of Fortune 100 companies now use. Google might also spend as much as $205 billion on capex this year, much of it likely on data centers to further expand its cloud compute arm.

Some read all this as a sign that Google is letting its AGI-chasing research fall to the wayside, content to ship “good enough” models that fulfill the needs of most consumers and firms. (In a blog post about Hassabis’s role change, Pichai said Google is “committed to being at the frontier” while also touting its “incredible momentum at earnings.”)

Bottom line: This might be Google’s Ship of Theseus moment. Plank by plank, a company whose researchers once put it at the forefront of the gen AI race is rebuilding itself around selling compute to its frontier rivals. —WK

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