Koray Kavukcuoglu is becoming head of DeepMind, Google's AI unit, and will report directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai:
- He will oversee Gemini model development, frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams:
- Google is trying to keep pace with OpenAI and Anthropic as coding becomes an increasingly important battleground in frontier AI:
DeepMind's new boss is set to face intense pressure to close the AI performance gap with OpenAI and Anthropic:
OpenAI and Anthropic have released new systems in recent months that have been both hailed for and prompted concern over their advanced capabilities. On the other hand, Google, which acquired DeepMind in 2014, hasn't unveiled a frontier model since early 2026:
Koray Kavukcuoglu, who was previously the AI unit's CTO and parent company Google's chief AI architect, is inheriting a race to catch up to OpenAI and Anthropic at the frontier — building the industry's most advanced models:
His appointment will bring more focus to GDM, with LLM improvements being the clear route forward:
