“I don’t sleep much,” Hassabis just said to Fortune’s Titans and Industry Disruptors podcast with editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. “I try to get six (hours), but I have unusual sleeping habits that I manage during the day. (I) try and pack my office day with as many meetings as possible, over and over again, almost without time, without a break in between.

The AI ​​pioneer has been on a winning streak since 2014, when he sold his AI company, DeepMind, to the tech behemoth Google. Admitting himself was angry fear among his competitors; Meta CEO Mark ZuckerbergA higher offer was turned down, and a fellow tech mogul was furious with the deal Elon Musk Cebu launched OpenAI with Sam Altman as a OPPOSITION.

A decade later, Hassabis oversees all of Google’s AI businesses, including its popular tool Gemini. And with what little free time he has, Hassabis also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2024, while leading a startup that aims to solve disease using AI: Isomorphic Labs.

Yet after a long day of work running DeepMind, the CEO wasn’t ready to get a well-deserved shut-eye. When his day shift is over, he takes a short break before getting right back to work—with no meetings or distractions to interrupt his flow.

“I go home, spend a little time with the family, have dinner, and then I start the second day of work around 10 in the evening and go to 4 in the morning, where I do my thinking and more creative work and research work. And it’s done,” continued Hassabis. “I come alive at about 1 am”

From Reddit to Airbnb: These executives love to work late into the night

Hassabis isn’t the only one leading a successful business in his own timeline.

Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky neither is one of the “rise and grind” like other businessmen. Chesky gets his energy at night, after his workout routine ends around 9:30 p.m.

He reaches peak productivity at 10 p.m., which lasts until he falls asleep around 2:30 a.m. And since he’s the boss of his $73 billion short-term rental business, he can set the rules; his late bedtime meant no dawn meetings the next day, since 10 a.m. was the earliest Chesky would go.

“If I have a girlfriend, maybe it will change,” Chesky SPOKE THE Wall Street Journal last year. “But I’m not, so I’m going to enjoy it.”

Some founders including Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian fall more into the night owl camp than the early-riser pack. He goes to bed around 2 a.m. every day—hours later than many CEOs who snooze.

“I try not to put the computer in the room,” Ohanian said Fast Company in a 2013 interview. “I used to sleep with it, though. I always wake up spooning my laptop.”

And the global chief brand officer of the French sports label Salomon, Scott Mellin, also does not want to come to his work at dawn. He reserves the early morning hours to ski or bike, thinking “hard about business” before clocking in. prefer to go to office when others are at lunch—and stay late before attending to other work-related obligations.

“I spend my mornings skiing or cycling, which gives me time to think carefully about the business before going to the office at noon,” Mellin SPOKE luck last year. “I work late into the night or go out to dinner with clients or colleagues. It may sound different, but it’s a routine I’ve been following for over 25 years.”