Google hired Koray Kavukcuoglu as its new chief AI architect. He was DeepMind’s CTO and will now be a senior VP reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai.
Kavukcuoglu’s job: speed up integration of Google’s AI models into products, improve iteration, and boost efficiency. He’s moving from London to Mountain View for the role.
This move comes as Google pushes to monetize its AI tech from DeepMind. They’ve been folding DeepMind deeper into Google since 2023. Meanwhile, AI competition heats up and profits lag behind investment. 
Google is spending $75 billion on AI infrastructure this year. At the same time, they offered buyouts to some Search and Ads employees to cut costs.
Google’s rivals like Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and startups such as OpenAI are also pouring cash into AI.
Last month at I/O, Google rolled out new AI products and launched a $249.99/month AI tools subscription. They also announced partnerships, including one with Warby Parker, for their Android XR operating system with Gemini AI assistant for wearables.
Sundar Pichai in a memo to employees on Kavukcuoglu’s promotion:
“Koray will help with product strategy and accelerate how we bring our world-leading models into our products, with the goal of more seamless integration, faster iteration, and greater efficiency.”
