Welcome back. The main thing happening today is the leadership shake-up at Google DeepMind. Live 12–3 BST. Here's your Order of Play.
WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY
Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind.
Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in a London office back in 2010, sold it to Google in 2014 for around £400m, and built it into one of the most important AI labs on earth. Its breakthroughs range from mastering Go to developing AlphaFold, earning Hassabis and John Jumper the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Hassabis becomes Chair of DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet as long-time CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over as SVP. He says the new role will let him focus on science and his drug-discovery company, Isomorphic, where he's working to use AI to cure disease.
Jeff Dean is also stepping away, closing out nearly 27 years as one of the most important engineers Google has ever had. He built a large part of the infrastructure the entire company runs on from MapReduce and TensorFlow to the systems behind Search. Dean is starting his own research company, Discovery Loop, with Google among its backers.
Alphabet shares fell 4% on Wednesday as investors reacted to the news. The exits cap a rough few months as Gemini 3.5 Pro is reportedly behind schedule and star researchers including Gemini's co-lead have defected to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Two of the most important people in AI leaving in a single afternoon. We're getting into all of it on today's show at 12 BST.
YESTERDAY’S MOMENT
In hindsight, yesterday's conversation feels especially timely. Just hours before Demis Hassabis announced he was handing over the CEO role, Axios AI reporter Madison Mills described a DeepMind wrestling with its identity.
"I talked to people at Google DeepMind who are really at odds with Demis when it comes to the company mission," she said, pointing to unease over Google's military partnerships. She contrasted that with Anthropic, where "mission is such a core part of the culture."
Tune in this afternoon as Madison returns for a second straight day to unpack the news.
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