Behind the exit of DeepMind’s CEO: low morale, a talent exodus, and model delays

"Once a front-runner, the company has recently ceded ground to rivals, especially OpenAI and Anthropic. This was most evident in delays around the release of the company’s Gemini 3.5 Pro model, which has missed three release deadlines in recent months. Three of the DeepMind engineers who talked to Fortune blamed the delays on the company failing to prioritize AI coding abilities."

On Wednesday, at the end of the day in London, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis had some news for employees.

Hassabis, DeepMind’s cofounder and the lab’s longtime steward, was giving up the CEO title and moving to a chairman role, they said. Minutes later, the news broke that longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean and several other prominent researchers were leaving the company.

Staff in DeepMind’s London office were shocked. They had questions. Was the move a promotion or a demotion? Would Hassabis retain real influence over DeepMind’s direction? And was Google finalizing a power shift from the London lab to its Mountain View headquarters?

One DeepMind engineer familiar with internal reaction told Fortune that employees were “very mixed” on what the reshuffle meant, with some wondering whether the chairman role would ultimately end with Hassabis phased entirely out of the company.

In reality, the shock exit was just the tip of the iceberg of what has been a difficult year for Google DeepMind. Within the lab, three current and one former employee told Fortune tensions were already simmering. Delayed models, high-profile exits of talent, and a very public fight with its own staff over controversial defense contracts had left insiders wondering if Google had lost its way in the AI race.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/08/10/how-stalled-models-missed-deadlines-and-staff-burnout-lead-to-the-unraveling-of-googles-deepmind/?utm_source=reddit/