Demis Hassabis is stepping away from day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind to become Alphabet’s chief scientist and DeepMind chair, while Koray Kavukcuoglu takes operational control. Hassabis will focus on long-term AI research, strategy, and the potential development of artificial general intelligence. Their departure follows other recent losses from Google’s AI organization, including researchers who moved to OpenAI and Anthropic. Kavukcuoglu’s closer involvement with Google Cloud could give enterprise customers a clearer line between DeepMind research and commercial services. Reuters reported that some Google Cloud leaders viewed his appointment as a positive step for commercialization.