Jeff Dean, the ‘legendary engineer’ who built Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology foundation, is leaving Google after 27 years. Key Google AI researchers are moving with Dean, accelerating the talent drain. Alphabet has launched a major reorganization separating leadership for AI research and model commercialization.

According to Reuters and others on the 5th (local time), Dean is leaving to found ‘Discovery Loop’, which aims to automate AI research. Major Google AI researchers including Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le will also move with him. Google has decided to support Discovery Loop with funding and computing capacity.

Dean developed the ‘large-scale distributed computing systems’ that underpin Google Search and cloud computing. In 2011, he founded Google Brain and led in-house research. Dean also co-led development of Google’s flagship AI model ‘Gemini’ with Vinyals, Noam Shazeer, and others. However, Noam Shazeer moved to OpenAI in June, and with Dean and Vinyals also leaving, core Gemini researchers have departed in large numbers. Previously, Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John Jumper also moved to rival Anthropic.

The departures are seen as exposing disarray in Google’s AI strategy, including delays in launching new AI models. While OpenAI and Anthropic have recently been releasing new models at intervals of one to two months and vying for the lead, Google postponed the launch of the Gemini 3.5 Pro model that had been slated for release in June. It is said the decision was influenced by the model not reaching the desired level in areas such as coding ability.

Alphabet sought to reset the tone by announcing a reorganization of its AI research unit, DeepMind, that day. Demis Hassabis will step down as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google DeepMind to become DeepMind chairman and the newly created Alphabet chief scientist. Hassabis will focus on medium- to long-term research such as AI drug discovery and artificial general intelligence (AGI). Day-to-day management of DeepMind and development of Gemini will be overseen by Koray Kavukcuoglu, who had been Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He will also serve concurrently as Alphabet’s chief AI architect.

Observers say the reshuffle puts the emphasis on model commercialization. It is also seen as an effort to bolster the execution capacity of development teams amid the loss of key talent. A senior Google Cloud official told Reuters, “Kavukcuoglu’s promotion is a step that will help advance commercialization.”