Inside Google’s frantic push to close the AI gap
Google co-founder Sergey Brin in recent months has urged key AI staff to go all in on the company’s Gemini model as it seeks to close the gap with rivals,…
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Google co-founder Sergey Brin in recent months has urged key AI staff to go all in on the company’s Gemini model as it seeks to close the gap with rivals, two people familiar with his remarks have said.
As Anthropic raced ahead with a preview of its powerful Claude Mythos model, Brin addressed hundreds of employees in an April town hall, urging the company’s Google DeepMind AI lab to move faster, said one of the people on condition of anonymity.
Google’s Gemini model briefly overtook competitors last November, but new updates from Anthropic and OpenAI once again put it in catch-up mode. By August, Google had delayed the new flagship version of Gemini by two months after internal testing showed its performance continued to lag behind rivals in areas such as coding, one of the sources and another person familiar with the matter said.
On 5 August, the Mountain View, California tech giant announced a sweeping leadership overhaul of its Google DeepMind AI division in which its chief, Demis Hassabis, stepped aside in favour of his deputy, Koray Kavukcuoglu. Hassabis became chair, with fewer management obligations. At the same time, the two original technical co-leads of Gemini quit to co-found a start-up.
While some industry observers have questioned if Google is exiting the model race, interviews with seven people knowledgeable about Gemini’s development efforts show that Google’s commercialisation strategy and reorganisation of ranks last week are tied to its effort to achieve model supremacy.
The changes mark a further erosion of DeepMind’s autonomy, which Google has chipped away at since buying the London-based lab in 2014 in an ongoing push for its AI to power more of its software and make more money. The shake-up included a revelation during an all-hands meeting on 6 August that some teams were moving out of DeepMind and into corporate Google, two sources said.
Google declined to answer questions about Brin’s recent involvement, DeepMind’s structural changes, and concerns held by staff.
Under Hassabis, Google DeepMind pursued a wider range of AI research projects than its rivals while building Gemini models that are essential to corporate commercial interests. But in past years, Hassabis worked against some efforts that could have meant new revenue for Google or helped it gain better footing in the AI race. His Google allies previously said that they rejected the idea that Hassabis gave short shrift to the business or focused too much on long-term science.
Read: The AI agent race is on – and Google wants to win it
In 2025, Google CEO Sundar Pichai appointed Kavukcuoglu, then DeepMind’s chief technology officer, to an additional senior post as Google’s chief AI architect. His task was to embed Gemini across the company’s products. Four of the sources said that in the months that followed, some leaders at DeepMind found their influence diminished while Kavukcuoglu became the central figure shaping Gemini’s direction.
Kavukcuoglu had Br…