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Vinod Khosla (vkhosla) credits Google — specifically Sundar Pichai, Larry Page…

2026-08-05 · 16:41 UTC ·@vkhosla ·1 min read

Brief

Google DeepMind leadership changes: vkhosla credits Google execs for accelerating AI from Waymo to DeepMind investments, while Sundar Pichai announced Demis Hassabis as Chair of Google DeepMind and Alphabet Chief Scientist and Koray Kavukcuoglu as SVP running model development, GDM research and Gemini teams; Pichai cited Koray’s 13‑year tenure and work on WaveNet and DQN.

Why it matters

Vinod Khosla (vkhosla) credits Google — specifically Sundar Pichai, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin — with materially accelerating AI from Waymo’s early self‑driving efforts through acquisitions and heavy investment, saying they “deserve full credit.”

Key details

  • Sundar Pichai announced Demis Hassabis will become Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, and will continue to lead Isomorphic Labs while focusing on AGI and scientific discovery.
  • Koray Kavukcuoglu (Koraykv) will become SVP of Google DeepMind, responsible for model development, GDM research, and the Gemini app & developer teams; Pichai noted Koray’s 13 years at GDM and role in breakthroughs like WaveNet and DQN.
Source evidence

Full credit: @Google has been the real source of AI acceleration from @Waymo self driving cars when most people were skeptics to buying @GoogleDeepMind to investing heavily. Lots of research in universities but this team, including Sundar, Larry & Sergey, deserve full credit for believing, investing and accelerating it. Huge impact

Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai)

Just shared some changes we’re making to the teams at @GoogleDeepMind.

@DemisHassabis is stepping up to become Chair of @GoogleDeepMind & Chief Scientist of Alphabet, in addition to leading @IsomorphicLabs. He’ll be able to dedicate his time and focus on shaping the future of AGI and scientific discovery. It’s work that is vitally important to Alphabet and humanity, and I can’t imagine a better person than Demis to do it. He’ll stay closely connected to Koray and the GDM teams.

@Koraykv will become the SVP, @GoogleDeepMind, responsible for all aspects of model development, GDM research, and @Geminiapp & dev teams. Koray has been at GDM for 13 years and is a world-renowned expert in the field, starting our deep learning team and driving breakthroughs like WaveNet & DQN. GDM is in great hands!

Excited for this next chapter. You can read my note along with the message Demis sent to @GoogleDeepMind here: blog.google/company-news/ins…

Link

The next chapter of our AI momentum

Today, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai shared some changes with Google DeepMind teams.
blog.google

— https://nitter.net/sundarpichai/status/2085033425736745093#m