Google Moves Demis Hassabis to Chairman as Gemini 3.5 Pro Misses 3 Deadlines

3 articles · Updated · Fortune · Aug 7

Koray Kavukcuoglu took over DeepMind’s day-to-day operations as senior vice president reporting directly to Sundar Pichai, while Hassabis said he was stepping back to focus on science and long-term strategy.
Three current engineers told Fortune the reshuffle effectively shifts power about 6,000 miles from London to Mountain View, deepening fears that DeepMind is losing autonomy even as Google disputes that characterization.
Gemini 3.5 Pro has missed June, mid-July and later release targets, and employees blamed weak prioritization of coding and agentic capabilities for leaving Google behind OpenAI, Anthropic and some Chinese labs on key benchmarks.
June departures including Noam Shazeer and John Jumper added to burnout and retention strains, with staff describing 60-hour weeks and Google deploying larger equity packages to slow the talent exodus.
More than 580 employees also opposed Google’s Pentagon Gemini deal, and the leadership overhaul lands as DeepMind faces a union fight, defense-contract backlash and pressure to regain AI momentum.