Google's New AI Chief Takes Reins Amid AI Frontier Gap Concerns

Google's new AI chief 'KK' Koray Kavukcuoglu has taken over as SVP, overseeing Gemini model development and frontier AI research. He reports directly to Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Kavukcuoglu was the CTO of DeepMind before Google acquired it in 2012, and he has been directing model development and presenting major Gemini releases.

The departure of top-level executives including Jeff Dean and Noam Shazeer has led to concerns that Google is falling behind in AI. However, Kavukcuoglu's background as a product leader suggests that his focus will be on shipping products rather than exploring new research areas.

Google Cloud is the company's big focus under CEO Thomas Kurian, and it is growing rapidly with 82% year-over-year growth last quarter at 36% margins. The allocation fight has tipped in favor of Google Cloud, with more than a fifth of TPU shipments through late 2027 sold directly to Anthropic.

While the frontier gap is real, Kavukcuoglu's job is not to win the frontier-of-the-month but to run the product machine that turns Google's AI capabilities into Gemini for billions and cloud revenue from everyone else's AI. With its own TPUs, models, cloud, and distribution to billions, Google has a strong competitive advantage in the AI market.