DeepMind CEO engages daily with Google CEO to boost competition with OpenAI

Alphabet shares kicked off 2025 with investors pondering if Google could keep pace with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in the AI arena. By the end of the year, the stock recorded its best showing since 2009.

Google regained its enthusiasm for AI. A significant part of this revival came from DeepMind, the UK company Google bought in 2014 for about £400 million.

During a broad discussion for CNBC's new podcast, The Tech Download, DeepMind's founder and CEO Demis Hassabis described it as "the driving force" of Google's AI endeavors, noting that adjustments had been made to allow the tech giant to swiftly launch AI products in a "highly competitive market."

Hassabis mentioned he converses with Google CEO Sundar Pichai “every day,” highlighting the close collaboration between the two executives to foster innovation rapidly.

"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 of years, we've been building that backbone, so not just the models, but also ... architecting the entire infrastructure of Google so that ... these things can ship incredibly quickly."

This strategy could prove crucial for Google as it braces for another year of rivalry from OpenAI, along with numerous other competitors like Amazon, Perplexity, and Anthropic.

"It’s an intensely competitive market right now," Hassabis remarked. He noted that "numerous" experienced individuals in the tech industry for "20, 30 years," mentioned this was "the most demanding environment they've ever encountered, maybe ever in the tech sector."