Google announced on August 12, 2026, that it has appointed Koray Kavukcuoglu as the new Senior Vice President of its artificial intelligence unit, DeepMind. Kavukcuoglu, who previously served as the division’s Chief Technology Officer, will report directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and will oversee the development of Gemini models, frontier AI research, and the Gemini application and developer teams.
The appointment marks a leadership transition for the AI division, which Google acquired in 2014. Kavukcuoglu succeeds DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, who will move into a new role as the organization’s Chair. Kavukcuoglu joined DeepMind in 2012, prior to its acquisition by Google.
The leadership change occurs as other technology companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have released new AI models in 2026. In a statement to CNBC, a Google spokesperson said the company’s path to artificial general intelligence (AGI) involves advancing on multiple fronts, including agents, coding, robotics, and world models, and pointed to recent DeepMind releases and research in these areas.
Several industry analysts provided commentary on the appointment. Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC that the promotion “feels like a move that is designed to adjust the focus of Google’s efforts away from academic projects and more toward a stronger focus on improving frontier performance.”
Malik Ahmed Khan, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, noted the competitive landscape, telling CNBC that coding is an area where he believes OpenAI and Anthropic are “miles ahead” of Google. In response to suggestions that the company had been distracted from its primary mission, the Google spokesperson told CNBC it would be inaccurate to say the company was not focused on its goal of solving “intelligence.”
Under Kavukcuoglu’s leadership, analysts expect a shift in operational focus. “This shows that Google is prioritizing execution over deep research,” Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellation Research, told CNBC. “Expect faster releases, more experimentation and an emphasis on developing to a product roadmap.”
As part of his previous role, Kavukcuoglu relocated from London, where DeepMind was founded, to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. A Google spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that the company remains committed to its presence in London.
On the company’s most recent earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai stated that nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies are using Gemini Enterprise, a version of its AI services for cloud customers. Sebastian Mallaby, author of “The Infinity Machine,” a book about DeepMind, commented on the business aspect in a CNBC interview, stating that “the monetization of the model is doing extremely well.”
Brian Hopkins, a principal analyst at Forrester, noted the new organizational structure. “Models, the app, and the developer teams under one executive is how a company organizes a product group rather than a lab,” he told CNBC. “This is something that Google knows how to do much better than OpenAI or Anthropic.”
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, saw its shares decline on the day of the announcement, though the stock has risen approximately 76% over the past 12 months.
