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Demis Hassabis

Chair, Google DeepMind; Chief Scientist, Alphabet

Demis Hassabis is chair and co-founder of Google DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet. He handed over day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind in 2026 while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs. His career connects artificial intelligence, neuroscience and scientific discovery. He co-founded DeepMind in 2010, completed a neuroscience doctorate at UCL, and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein-structure prediction through AlphaFold.

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Demis Hassabis portrait
Photo: John SearsCC BY-SA 4.0 · Displayed in grayscale

At a glance

Demis Hassabis is chair and co-founder of Google DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet. He handed over day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind in 2026 while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs. His career connects artificial intelligence, neuroscience and scientific discovery. He co-founded DeepMind in 2010, completed a neuroscience doctorate at UCL, and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein-structure prediction through AlphaFold.

DeepMind founding
2010 ↗

Sources checked . Selected career background and milestones.

Career, in context.

Selected research, leadership and career milestones, newest first.

  1. Becomes DeepMind chair and Alphabet chief scientist

    Hassabis hands over day-to-day Google DeepMind leadership to Koray Kavukcuoglu, becoming its chair and Alphabet’s chief scientist while continuing to lead Isomorphic Labs.

    Source: Google ↗

  2. Receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

    Hassabis and John Jumper are recognised for protein-structure prediction through AlphaFold. David Baker also receives the chemistry prize for computational protein design.

    Source: Google DeepMind ↗

  3. Leads Google DeepMind

    Google brings DeepMind and Google Brain together as Google DeepMind. Hassabis leads the combined organisation as it expands work on advanced AI systems.

    Source: Google DeepMind ↗

  4. AlphaFold advances protein prediction

    DeepMind reports AlphaFold’s results at CASP14, where organisers recognise a major advance in predicting protein structures using AI and the system’s computational methods.

    Source: Google DeepMind ↗

  5. AlphaGo defeats Lee Sedol

    DeepMind’s AlphaGo wins its match against Lee Sedol by four games to one in Seoul, demonstrating advances in search and neural network methods.

    Source: Google DeepMind ↗

  6. Co-founds DeepMind

    Hassabis co-founds DeepMind in London. The lab develops an interdisciplinary approach combining machine learning, neuroscience and other fields to pursue general artificial intelligence.

    Source: Google DeepMind ↗

  7. Completes a neuroscience PhD

    Hassabis completes a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience at UCL’s Institute of Neurology, before continuing as a postdoctoral researcher and later establishing DeepMind.

    Source: UCL ↗

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