Google appoints Türkiye-born engineer as DeepMind senior vice president

Türkiye-born engineer Koray Kavukcuoglu has been appointed senior vice president of Google DeepMind, where he will oversee model development, the Gemini project, and advanced AI research teams, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Wednesday.

Pichai disclosed the restructuring via social media platform X, elevating Kavukcuoglu from his previous positions as chief technology officer and chief AI architect at the division. The appointment places the longtime executive at the helm of critical initiatives driving the company's artificial intelligence strategy.

Technical Legacy

Kavukcuoglu has spent 13 years at Google DeepMind, establishing its deep learning team and contributing to foundational breakthroughs in the field. "Koray has been at GDM (Google DeepMind) for 13 years and is a world-renowned expert in the field, starting our deep learning team and driving breakthroughs like WaveNet & DQN (Deep Q-Network)," Pichai said. "GDM is in great hands!"

Co-Founder’s Scientific Focus

The reshuffle also transitions DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis to chair of the division's board while appointing him chief scientist at Alphabet. Hassabis will retain leadership of Isomorphic Labs alongside these new responsibilities.

Pichai stated that Hassabis will concentrate on "shaping the future of AGI (artificial general intelligence) and scientific discovery," work the chief executive described as essential to both the company and humanity. The changes took effect immediately following Wednesday's announcement.