Demis Hassabis is stepping down as Google DeepMind CEO and into a new role.Bloomberg/Getty ImagesGoogle insiders view Demis Hassabis' move to chief scientist as a way to find the next leap in AI.Since the Google DeepMind merger, some of Hassabis' focus has been pulled away from research.Hassabis had been moving away from day-to-day managerial work for about a year.Google needs a win in the AI race. Employees say moving Demis Hassabis into a chief scientist role is the kind of gambit that could deliver one as the industry pushes toward AI that can surpass human intelligence.Google's shock leadership reshuffle on Wednesday, which saw longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean depart and Hassabis step down as DeepMind CEO, comes at a critical juncture for the search giant.After riding high in late 2025, the company is trailing the competition in coding — AI's first big commercial takeoff — and continues to postpone its new frontier model.Placing Hassabis in his new role at Google parent company Alphabet gives it a longer-horizon view that some insiders said could help it make bigger leaps in areas beyond chatbots and coding. Hassabis will also become chair of DeepMind, the company said."He doesn't care about chatbots," said one longtime Googler of Hassabis, who was among six current and former employees who spoke to Business Insider. "He wants to use AI to cure cancer."A Google spokesperson pointed Business Insider to its blog announcing the leadership changes.Hassabis' balancing actIn recent months, Hassabis has found a new favorite phrase. We are, he likes to say, in "the foothills of the Singularity."Those five words about the moment when AI substantially overtakes human capabilities offer a clue to what Hassabis thinks is important: helping usher in the next major leap in artificial intelligence.Hassabis, who cofounded DeepMind in 2010 and sold it to Google four years later, has long been passionate about AI's potential for scientific breakthroughs — even when they aren't an obvious revenue generator for his employer.He oversaw AlphaFold, an AI system that solved the 50-year-old protein-folding problem, which won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2025, he told The Guardian that, if he had controlled AI's development path, he might have kept it in the laboratory longer to pursue more AlphaFold-like achievements and "maybe cured cancer."However, after Google fully absorbed DeepMind in 2023, he found himself in a balancing act between pushing the frontiers of AI and helping Google shore up its commercial products with AI. That has at times involved Hassabis wading into company politics to resolve team tensions or focusing on product development that interests him less, Business Insider previously reported.At times, two insiders said, Hassabis appeared to relent to corporate realities. When Google removed its red lines on building AI for weapons or surveillance — which was marked by a blog post with Hassabis' name on it — it was a direct reversal of a position Hassabis had previously held. The change in stance has caused tensions in the workforce and some departures.'An incredible new age of discovery and wonder'Over the past year, Hassabis' attention has moved away from corporate politicking and day-to-day management to the bigger-picture impacts of AI, according to some inside the company.Google employees have different views on whether the new role will give him more or less influence over these types of issues inside the company, and whether it's a promotion or a demotion."I'm not sure I would call it a move up or down," one longtime senior Googler who has worked closely with Hassabis told Business Insider. "I think it's just a move towards what he's passionate about and maybe where the organization needs him."On Thursday, tech analyst and cofounder of Turing Company, Jiang Liu, responded on X to reports of Hassabis' shift away from CEO duties over the last year, saying it was "actually a good thing."Google's outgoing chief scientist, Jeff Dean.THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty ImagesWhile the markets didn't like Hassabis' move — Google's stock dropped as much as 6% on the news — it's a "formalization of something that had been happening informally," said Sebastian Mallaby, the author of a biography of Hassabis and DeepMind, in a post on X.Externally, Hassabis has increasingly become the face of Google's AI efforts, meeting with President Donald Trump and other AI leaders in recent months to discuss his long-running concern: AI safety.In a note to DeepMind staff shared publicly by Google on Wednesday, Hassabis captured what he sees as the urgency of the moment: "I've been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand," he wrote. "It's critical that we collectively get the next steps right to ensure this all goes well for humanity and we usher in an incredible new age of discovery and wonder."Google's brain drainGoogle's big bet on moving Hassabis comes amid a talent drain at
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