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Sir Demis Hassabis, the recently produced Nobel Prize and CEO of Google DeepMindbelieves that humanity stands on the precipice of a “new golden age of discovery.” But achieving this utopia requires navigating a tumultuous period of transition—a decade-long sprint that Hassabis describes as a necessary disruption for the $3.9 trillion tech giant he helped lead.
Talked to luck Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell at Fortune 500: Titans and Industry Disruptors podcast, Hassabis offers a vision of a future defined by “radical abundance.” This is a world where artificial intelligence has successfully bottled the scientific method to solve the most difficult problems on the planet.
“In 10, 15 years time, we will be in a kind of new golden age of discovery that (is) a kind of new renaissance,” Hassabis predicted. In this near future, he predicts that “medicine will not look like it does today,” with AI enabling personalized treatments and cures for major diseases. More than that in health, he said he envisions AI unlocking new materials to solve the energy crisis through fusion or solar breakthroughs, eventually allowing humanity to “travel to the stars and … explore the galaxy”.
However, the path to the stars is paved with what Hassabis identifies as a “classic innovator’s dilemma” here on Earth. For Googlethe company that organizes the world’s information, the rise of generative AI represents an existential pivot point. To build the future, the company must risk disrupting its own core search business.
“If we don’t bother ourselves, someone else will,” Hassabis said. “You better … do it on your terms.”
Big reorg at DeepMind
This philosophy drove a massive internal reorganization in 2023, fueled by the rise of competitors such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Google merged two world-class research units, Google Brain and DeepMindto an entity under the leadership of Hassabis. “Bringing the two groups together and trying to bring together the best of both cultures was great,” Hassabis said, “and I think we’re reaping the rewards of it now.” He likens the combined entity to a “nuclear power plant plugged into the rest of this amazing company,” providing the raw intelligence that powers everything from Search to the YouTube.
The consolidation is needed to gather the “massive computing power” needed to train frontier models like Gemini. The strategy seems to be working; after the release of models like Gemini 3 and the viral image generator “Nano Banana,” Alphabet’s shares rose by approximately 65% by the end of the year. Hassabis said he thinks the company has now “crossed the watershed moment” where AI models are capable enough to act as useful assistants in high-level research.
Science points the way to the next renaissance
The basis of this new era, according to Hassabis, is the use of AI in biology. He points to AlphaFold, DeepMind’s collapse model that solved the 50-year-old “protein folding problem,” as proof of concept. By predicting the 3D structure of more than 200 million proteins, the system provides a road map for the human body that is now used by more than 3 million researchers. (This work allowed Hassabis to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024.)
Hassabis is now applying AlphaFold to Isomorphic Labs, a Google spin-off dedicated to “solving” the disease. By moving drug discovery from “wet labs” to in silico (computer) simulation, Hassabis said he believed the process would be “1,000 times more efficient”. The company is already in pre-clinical trials for cancer drugs, with hopes of moving into clinical trials by the end of the year. (Also in January, Shontell spoke Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla about his hopes of finding a cure for cancer through the clever use of AI.)
This “renaissance” requires relentless effort, however. Hassabis admits that he “doesn’t sleep much,” working a “second day” from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. to focus on deep scientific thinking. “I come alive at about 1 in the morning,” he confessed.
For Hassabis, the hectic schedule and the corporate restructuring are the stakes on the table for the ultimate prize. The next decade may be a period of intense technological upheaval and adaptation, but he says he remains convinced of the destination. “We started with the mission of … solving intelligence and then using it to solve everything,” Hassabis said. If his 15-year timeline holds, “everyone else” could include the stars themselves.
Watch the full episode on YouTube. The interview transcript can be found here.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
