Loss of ‘most Google’ engineer Jeff Dean jolts morale inside the company’s AI ranks

Days after Google unveiled its first Gemini chatbot in 2023 to compete with ChatGPT, Jeff Dean went to an AI conference where he was promptly swarmed by attendees. Suddenly, the Google executive looked at his watch and realized he was due to give a talk minutes later, spurring a rush to take selfies with the influential tech leader before he left.

Now, it’s the employees at Google who are bracing for the AI pioneer’s exit. Dean, who started at the company more than two decades ago, said Wednesday that he is leaving Google alongside colleagues Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le and Oriol Vinyals to build a startup called Discovery Loop. The announcement was part of a broader executive shuffle that saw Google DeepMind head Demis Hassabis shift into a chairman role at the AI lab.

Dean’s move represents one of the most significant departures from Google’s AI organization in years and comes at a moment of uncertainty about its ability to keep pace with OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. Current and…