Jeff Dean is leaving Google after 27 years to launch Discovery Loop, an AI startup for science and engineering, as the company reshuffles its top AI leadership.
Dean, Google’s chief scientist, will build the company with senior Google fellow Sanjay Ghemawat. Google said it is investing in the new venture, which will be structured as a public benefit corporation, similar to Anthropic and OpenAI.
The changes ripple through Google’s AI ranks. Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind to become chairman of the unit and Alphabet’s new chief scientist. Koray Kavukcuoglu, DeepMind’s CTO who leads development of the next-generation Gemini 4 model, takes over as head of the lab, reporting directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Alphabet’s stock fell more than 4% after the announcement. Hassabis said the timing was right to hand over day-to-day operations and focus on the bigger picture, working with Pichai on strategic and global AI issues.
The departures come as Google races to stay ahead of Anthropic and OpenAI in frontier model development while spending hundreds of billions on AI infrastructure. Dean’s exit marks the end of an era for the company he helped build into an AI powerhouse, and the start of a new bet on applying AI to scientific discovery.
