Koray Kavukcuoglu
Senior vice president at Google DeepMind and Google's Chief AI Architect
A deep learning pioneer at DeepMind who drove work on WaveNet and DQN and now leads Google DeepMind as senior vice president and Google's chief AI architect.
Biography
Koray Kavukcuoglu is a Turkish AI researcher and Google executive. He graduated from Middle East Technical University and completed a master's and a PhD in computer science at New York University in 2010, mentored by Yann LeCun.
He has been at DeepMind for 13 years, according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who says he started the company's deep learning team and drove breakthroughs such as WaveNet and DQN. He served as chief technology officer of Google DeepMind and, in June 2025, became Google's first chief AI architect, a senior vice president role reporting to Pichai with a mandate to bring Google's models into its products faster. In August 2026 Google announced that he would take over the lead role at DeepMind from Demis Hassabis, as senior vice president responsible for all aspects of model development, Google DeepMind research, and the Gemini app and developer teams. Hassabis became chair of DeepMind and Alphabet's chief scientist.
Notable contributions
Named Google's first chief AI architect
Became Google's first chief AI architect in June 2025, a senior vice president role reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai, after serving as chief technology officer of Google DeepMind.
Took over leadership of Google DeepMind
In August 2026 became senior vice president responsible for model development, Google DeepMind research and the Gemini app and developer teams, taking the lead role from Demis Hassabis.
Drove DeepMind's DQN and WaveNet breakthroughs
Is credited by Sundar Pichai with starting DeepMind's deep learning team and driving advances including DQN and WaveNet.
