Demis Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, the world’s leading AI research company. Best-known for developing AlphaGo, the first program to beat a world champion at the complex game of Go, DeepMind has published over 1000 research papers - including more than a dozen in Nature and Science - and achieved breakthrough results in many challenging AI domains from StarCraft II to protein folding.
A child chess prodigy, Demis coded the classic game Theme Park aged 17. After graduating from Cambridge University in computer science, he founded pioneering videogames company Elixir Studios, and completed a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at University College London. The journal Science listed his research on imagination and memory as one of 2007’s top ten breakthroughs.
He is a five-time World Games Champion, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2017 he featured in the Time 100 list of most influential people, and in 2018 he was awarded a CBE. In 2020, he was awarded the Dan David Prize Future Award for his work on AI.
Professional positions
Founder and CEO, DeepMind Founder and CEO, DeepMind
Interest and expertise
Subject groups
Computer sciences
Computer science (excl engineering aspects)
Anatomy, physiology and neurosciences
Behavioural neuroscience
Awards
Royal Society Mullard Award
For his pioneering use of machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms, delivering a significant contribution to national prosperity.