Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind acquired by Google in 2014, has stepped down as CEO to become chair of Google DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet. The move concerned investors and caused the share price to drop, as Alphabet plans to spend up to $205 billion this year. Hassabis wants to focus on artificial general intelligence (AGI), which he believes is close at hand, as well as on Isomorphic Labs, his company dedicated to AI drug discovery. This change highlights the tension between Hassabis’s scientific quest, exemplified by breakthroughs like AlphaFold and AlphaGo, and Google’s need to quickly commercialize and monetize its AI technologies amid fierce competition from OpenAI, Anthropic and Chinese players.
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