Google AI boss Demis Hassabis has a 4-step plan to bring the tech giant back to its ‘golden age’

Good morning. We are in the thick of the AI revolution. But we can look back on January 2014 as one of the most important moments in business history. That was the month Demis Hassabis sold his AI company, DeepMindon Google.

He turned down a higher offer from Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. And the idea of Google owning something so powerful scared Elon Musk to such a degree that he decided to launch a rival company with Sam Altman: OpenAI.

Fast forward to now, and Demis is still the one to lose. He runs all of Google’s AI initiatives, including Gemini, which quickly eats into OpenAI’s user base.

In his spare time, Demis won a Nobel Prize for accurately predicting how proteins fold, and he runs a startup, Isomorphicwho wants to use AI to “solve all ills.”

Naturally, I wanted to meet this man to find out how he thinks and where he believes the world of AI is headed. We sat together at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where I asked him how he manages his teams—and his time—to do two demanding jobs at once (he divides his day into two, with his second work day from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., after which he sleeps). We talked about how he set targets to return Google to the “golden age” of constant delivery and innovation, after a period when it felt like it was asleep at the wheel in AI. “It’s a classic innovator’s dilemma,” Hassabis admits. “If we don’t bother ourselves, someone else will.”

He breaks his strategy down into four steps:

Nail the underlying technology and make it best in class. It serves as Google’s “nucleus” for all its products. “It doesn’t matter if your models aren’t best in class and state of the art,” Hassabis said. “And that’s what we’re focusing on, first with the Gemini models, but also with our other models, things like the Nano Banana, and the Veo.”
Rebuild internal processes across the organization to quickly leverage the best-in-class model. “That’s a year to 18 months to get right,” Hassabis said. “I think there are many more improvements that can be made, and we can have a faster pace.”
Force the team to focus only on the biggest opportunities and priorities. “I think the other thing is to instill in this culture of intensity and speed and focus, and cutting out the distractions,” he said.
Always make good decisions. “In today’s very noisy world, it’s important to consistently deliver good, rational decisions with little drama,” Hassabis said. “It’s amazing how many compounds there are over time.”

I walked away thinking I don’t want to be Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk today. You don’t want to go up against this soft-spoken but fierce competitor.

For the full conversation, please subscribe to Fortune 500: Titans & Disruptors in Industry on Spotify or Apple. You can too read the full transcript here. Special thanks to Deloitte to sponsor the show. If you like Titans and Troublemakersplease leave a review and share it with your team or friends. And for more on Demis, who luckThe cover star of our February/March issue, read all about it he at Fortune.com.

Contact CEO Daily by Diane Brady at [email protected]

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