Google names Koray Kavukcuoglu DeepMind head amid AI reshuffle after Gemini delay

The leadership change hands operational oversight of Gemini to Kavukcuoglu while Hassabis steps into Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, leaning further into Isomorphic Labs and long-term AGI strategy. Non-technical teams are being moved out of DeepMind into corporate Google, a structural signal that Google wants faster product rollout and monetization.

The trigger was a two-month delay of the next flagship Gemini after internal benchmarks showed it still trailing Anthropic and OpenAI on coding. Sergey Brin has reportedly pushed researchers to intensify model development and recursive self-improvement to close the gap. Hassabis's own LinkedIn post—'I've been working towards AGI my whole life and I believe it is now close at hand'—drew over 18,000 likes and framed the move as the next chapter rather than a demotion.

Competitively, the reshuffle is an admission that Gemini has fallen behind in the frontier race even as Google leads on distribution, with Gemini's assistant-app share reportedly climbing to 27.7% by May. The org change concentrates decision-making under Pichai, potentially speeding shipping cadence.

On r/GoogleGemini, a thread claiming 'Gemini 3.5/3.6 Pro has been cancelled' (209 upvotes) fed anxiety about the delay. Skeptics question whether reorganizing leadership addresses the underlying coding-quality gap or merely reshuffles accountability. Watch for the rescheduled flagship Gemini launch and whether Kavukcuoglu's research-first background accelerates or slows productization.