Demis Hassabis

Games, then the brain

Hassabis was born in London in 1976. Before university he coded Theme Park at Bullfrog Productions. At Cambridge he took a Double First in computer science, then founded his own games company, Elixir Studios.481213

Then he went back to science, with a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, finished in 2009. As first author of a 2007 paper in PNAS, he showed that patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences.4822

DeepMind, from Atari to AlphaFold

In 2010 he co-founded DeepMind in London with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. Google bought it in January 2014. The results came in Nature: DQN, which learned to play 49 Atari games from the pixels on the screen, in 2015, and AlphaGo, the first program to beat a Go world champion, in 2016.6789121423

AlphaFold took the work out of games and into biology. The 2021 Nature paper describing it had been cited 46,237 times by October 2026, according to Crossref, and the Nobel committee says more than two million people in 190 countries have used AlphaFold2. In 2024 Hassabis and Jumper shared half the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for protein structure prediction". David Baker took the other half.4524

He was knighted the same year for services to artificial intelligence. "Delighted and honoured to receive a Knighthood for services to AI," he posted.1018

Gemini, drugs and AGI

When Google merged its Brain team into DeepMind in 2023, Hassabis became chief executive of the combined lab. That December he introduced Gemini with a line about himself: "AI has been the focus of my life's work, as for many of my research colleagues."61720

He had already set up Isomorphic Labs in 2021 to bring the same methods to drug discovery. It raised $600 million in its first outside round in March 2025, led by Thrive Capital.11151625

He is open about where it is all heading. "I think over the next five to 10 years, a lot of those capabilities will start coming to the fore and we'll start moving towards what we call artificial general intelligence," he said at a briefing in London in March 2025, NBC News reported. In August 2026 he handed day-to-day running of Google DeepMind to Koray Kavukcuoglu and told staff: "I've been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand." He also signed the 2023 Statement on AI Risk, which says reducing the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority.1192127

NHS data, open code and military contracts

DeepMind's first big health project ran into a privacy dispute. In 2015 the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust gave it the records of 1.6 million patients to build Streams, an app to spot acute kidney injury. In 2017 the Information Commissioner's Office concluded that the Trust should have been far more transparent with patients. A later claim brought by Andrew Prismall against Google and DeepMind on behalf of those patients was struck out by the High Court in 2023. The Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal in December 2024, noting that its ruling did not decide whether individual patients might have valid claims.2930

Nature published AlphaFold 3 in May 2024 without its full code and said in an editorial that the decision had drawn criticism. Google DeepMind released inference code that November. Inside the company, at least 200 DeepMind staff signed a letter in May 2024 objecting to Google's military contracts, including reported contracts with the Israeli military, TechCrunch reported, citing Time. In February 2025 Hassabis co-wrote the blog post announcing Google's revised AI Principles. CNN and PA Media reported that the revision dropped an earlier pledge not to pursue AI for weapons or surveillance.313233343536

Hassabis, year by year

1. Aged 17

   Coded the simulation game Theme Park at Bullfrog Productions, before going to Cambridge81213

2. After Cambridge

   Graduated with a Double First in Computer Science and founded the games company Elixir Studios1213

3. 2009

   Completed a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at University College London48

4. 2010

   Co-founded DeepMind in London with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman; appointed a director of DeepMind Technologies Limited on 7 December 20106789

5. 2014

   Google bought DeepMind in January 2014712

6. 2016

   DeepMind published AlphaGo in Nature, the first program to beat a Go world champion614

7. 2020

   Presented AlphaFold2 with John Jumper46

8. 2021

   Launched Isomorphic Labs as a new Alphabet company, with himself as CEO111516

9. 2023

   Became CEO of Google DeepMind, formed from Google Brain and DeepMind617

10. 2024

    Knighted for services to artificial intelligence (March) and awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (October)451018

11. 2026

    Stepped back from day-to-day running of Google DeepMind to become its Chair and Alphabet's Chief Scientist1219

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