Google DeepMind leadership reshuffled, Gemini 3.5 Pro delayed two months on coding gaps
Reuters reported Aug 13: Koray Kavukcuoglu replaces Hassabis to lead DeepMind daily operations, Brin personally pushes Gemini, new flagship delayed two months on coding gaps.
On August 13, Reuters reported that Alphabet has restructured Google DeepMind's leadership and organizational architecture while accelerating Gemini development. On August 5, Alphabet officially announced that former DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis would step back from daily operations to become Chairman and Alphabet Chief Scientist, with his deputy Koray Kavukcuoglu elevated to Senior Vice President, reporting directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, holding final decision authority on DeepMind matters, and continuing to lead Gemini.
Seven sources familiar with Gemini development told Reuters that the new flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro launch has been delayed approximately two months, primarily because internal testing shows it still trails OpenAI and Anthropic on coding and other key capabilities. Hassabis and Kavukcuoglu told staff in an all-hands meeting that day-to-day lab operations would not change materially, though some non-technical teams will shift to report into Google proper. Reuters disclosed that Kavukcuoglu had gained supervisory authority over Gemini development more than a year ago.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has personally engaged in model development and resource allocation over recent months, pushing resources toward recursive self-improvement and demanding core AI staff go all-in on Gemini to close the gap with Anthropic and OpenAI. Sources identified root causes including persistent compute constraints and disagreements among Gemini project leads; Google has formed an internal team "Code Strike" to bolster coding capabilities.
Around the same time as the leadership restructuring, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on the July earnings call that Google intends to speed up its model release cadence and has committed substantial compute to training the upcoming Gemini 4 model. On August 12, Google launched the Pixel 11 series at its Made by Google event, fully equipped with the in-house Tensor G6 chip and Gemini Intelligence features.