By Arjun Kharpal
Publication Date: 2026-01-16 06:00:00
Alphabet shares started 2025 with investors questioning whether Google could keep up with ChatGPT maker OpenAI in the AI race. By year’s end, the stock had notched its best performance since 2009.
Google got its AI mojo back. Much of that was driven out of DeepMind, the British company Google acquired in 2014 for around £400 million.
In a wide-ranging interview for CNBC’s new podcast, The Tech Download, DeepMind’s founder and CEO Demis Hassabis called it “the engine room” of Google’s AI efforts, adding that changes had been made to enable the tech giant to rapidly roll out AI products amid a “ferocious competitive environment.”
Hassabis said he talks to Google CEO Sundar Pichai “every day,” underscoring how close the two executives are working to innovate quickly.
“All the AI technologies is done by this group … and then it’s diffused across all of these incredible products right across Google,” Hassabis told The Tech Download, which launched on Friday.
“And the last couple…
