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Google<\/a> is shaking up its AI leadership, with some of the company’s top experts in the field moving roles or leaving. Shares of the tech giant fell as much as 5% on the news.<\/p>\n Demis Hassabis is shedding his CEO title at DeepMind to take on a broader AI research role at Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Koray Kavukcuoglu, previously DeepMind’s chief technology officer, will head the unit, reporting to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.<\/p>\n Hassabis, one of the pioneers of modern AI, will become chief scientist of Alphabet and chair of Google DeepMind. He’s been tipped by some to be the next CEO<\/a>, and lately he’s been meeting with global policy leaders and making grand speeches about the long-term future of this technology.<\/p>\n Jeff Dean, a top AI researcher who’s been at Google for decades, is leaving to start his own initiative, Discovery Loop, with Sanjay Ghemawat, another top tech leader at the search giant.<\/p>\n “We have to accelerate all this work and stay focused on the AI frontier,” Pichai wrote in a blog post<\/a> on Wednesday. “At the same time, there’s never been a more important moment to shape the future of AGI and science.”<\/p>\n The company has struggled lately to keep up with frontier AI labs. Google’s next big model has been delayed<\/a> several times this year, while Anthropic and OpenAI have launched several top-performing offerings.<\/p>\n This is especially true in AI coding, which has become one of the most powerful and lucrative applications of this new technology. Earlier on Wednesday, Business Insider exclusively reported<\/a> that Google is in talks to invest more than $1.5 billion in startup Mechanize, which specializes in AI coding evaluations and development.<\/p>\n The change to Hassabis’s role is the biggest part of Google’s leadership shakeup on Wednesday. He’s a chess prodigy who has led some of the most important AI breakthroughs of the past decade and more, including AlphaGo and AlphaFold.<\/p>\n Hassabis’s new role will give him more space to focus on longer-term AI research projects, instead of handling management responsibilities that inevitably come with being CEO of a key Google division.<\/p>\n “I’ve decided that now is the right time for me to hand over my day-to-day operational responsibilities at GDM, so that I have the time and space to focus on the big picture and help influence what is to come to the best of my ability,” Hassabis said in a memo to colleagues, which was published by Google.<\/p>\n Have something to share? Contact this reporter via email at <\/em><\/strong>hlangley@businessinsider.com<\/u><\/em><\/strong><\/a> or Signal at 628-228-1836. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; <\/em><\/strong>here’s our guide to sharing information securely<\/u><\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n