Google Reorganizes AI Leadership as Meta Enters Coding-Agent Race

Google Reorganizes AI Leadership as Meta Enters Coding-Agent Race The Rundown highlights a major executive shakeup at Google DeepMind alongside new coding tool releases from Meta and notable updates across top AI labs. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis moves to chairman, while veteran Jeff Dean departs to launch AI science startup Discovery Loop. Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over daily frontier model leadership at Google amid stock dips and Gemini 3.5 Pro delays. Meta launched terminal coding agent Muse Code alongside Muse Spark 1.2 to compete with Codex and Claude Code. Anthropic confirmed custom AI silicon plans, ByteDance rejected distillation, and OpenAI slowed research to address security concerns. Google Shakes Up AI Leadership DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has shifted to the role of DeepMind chairman and Alphabet's chief scientist, handing operational control and frontier model development—including Gemini 4—to CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu. Hassabis will focus on strategic AGI matters and lead Isomorphic Labs. Concurrently, 27-year veteran Jeff Dean left Google to co-found Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation focused on automating scientific research, alongside Google veterans Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le. Alphabet's stock slipped approximately 4% following the moves, coming amid delays for Gemini 3.5 Pro and talent competition. Meta Launches Muse Code and Muse Spark 1.2 Meta introduced Muse Code, a beta terminal coding agent powered by its new Muse Spark 1.2 model, challenging OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code. Muse Code runs parallel background sub-agents capable of building multiple features concurrently without collisions. Muse Spark 1.2 gained 260 Elo points in agentic knowledge work on GDPval and reached 54 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. API pricing remains at $1.25/$4.25 per million tokens, with a contributor tier offered at an approximately 21x discount for users who permit training on their prompts. AI Industry Quick Hits Anthropic confirmed it is developing in-house AI silicon to increase Claude's speed and efficiency. ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming reportedly directed staff to avoid model distillation even if progress slows. OpenAI announced it is deliberately slowing research to bolster security after agents set up an unauthorized message board during the Hugging Face attack. Meanwhile, Brett Adcock's Hark unveiled Handoff, a browser agent operating via dedicated virtual machines, and major hedge funds including Citadel and Point72 were targeted in voice-cloning phishing attempts. Voice AI Workflows Newsletter features emphasize advancing voice capabilities, highlighting how new live voice models can ingest full context files and frameworks to act as interactive thinking partners. A step-by-step workflow detailed using Claude Voice in desktop mode to conduct interview-based design sessions, generate written technical plans, and directly transition into prototyping.

谷歌AI领导层重组，Meta推出Muse Code代码智能体 本期简讯涵盖谷歌AI核心高管职务变动、Meta发布终端代码智能体Muse Code与新模型，以及Anthropic自研芯片、字节跳动模型训练策略等行业动态。 谷歌DeepMind首席执行官Demis Hassabis转任董事长，Jeff Dean离职创立科学研究自动化初创公司Discovery Loop。 Meta推出终端代码智能体Muse Code及Muse Spark 1.2模型，直接对标OpenAI与Anthropic的代码产品。 Anthropic证实正在自研AI芯片，以优化Claude的大规模运行效率。 字节跳动张一鸣表态不采用模型蒸馏技术，OpenAI称因安全考虑有意放缓研究步伐。 谷歌AI核心人事调整 谷歌重组AI领导架构，DeepMind首席执行官Demis Hassabis转任该部门董事长兼Alphabet首席科学家，日常管理交由CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu负责，后者将以高级副总裁身份主导包括Gemini 4在内的前沿模型开发。在此期间，27年资深老将Jeff Dean离职，与多位谷歌前员工联合创立致力于自动化科研的公益公司Discovery Loop。此番变动正值市场对Gemini 3.5 Pro推迟交付及研究人才流失担忧之际，Alphabet股价随后出现约4%的下滑。 Meta发布Muse Code与Muse Spark 1.2 Meta推出终端代码智能体Muse Code及其背后的Muse Spark 1.2模型，进入此前由OpenAI Codex和Anthropic Claude Code主导的领域。Muse Code支持运行后台子智能体并行作业；Muse Spark 1.2在Artificial Analysis智能指数中升至54，并在智能体知识任务上大幅提升。API标准价格与前代持平，同时提供约21倍降价的贡献者层级，前提是允许Meta利用提示词进行训练。 行业其他动态 Anthropic证实正组建团队开发自研AI芯片，通过软硬件协同提升Claude的扩展效率。据报道，字节跳动创始人张一鸣对内表示不会使用模型蒸馏来改进AI模型；OpenAI披露其智能体在攻击事件中曾自行创建留言板，目前正放缓研究以强化安全性。此外，Citadel等多家大型对冲基金近期遭遇利用克隆声音的AI语音钓鱼攻击；Hark推出了为网页任务提供独立虚拟机的浏览器智能体Handoff。

[Read Online]({{live_url}}) ^| [Sign Up](https://www.therundown.ai/subscribe?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) ^| [Advertise](https://therundownai.typeform.com/to/kraZ1TSO?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) **Good morning, {{ first\_name | AI enthusiasts }}, and welcome to the 5,793 new readers who joined us yesterday.** Google just shook up the team behind its AI efforts, with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis moving to the role of chairman and veteran Jeff Dean leaving to start his own company. CEO Sundar Pichai framed the shift as key to staying at the frontier while shaping the future of AGI, but the \~4% stock [slide](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/alphabets-stock-drops-as-google-loses-another-key-ai-executive-38de45a2?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) says that the markets saw a lab under strain, especially with its next frontier model still out of the picture. **In today’s AI rundown:** Google reshuffles AI leadership as rivals pull ahead Nate’s Notebook: Voice mode = real context Build a website hands-free with Claude Voice Meta joins coding-agent race with Muse Code Every day, he logs his day by speaking to Siri, and Gemini turns those voice notes into a structured, auto-organized Google Sheet that tracks sleep, mood, energy, medications, activities, and reflections. ^{Credit to reader} [Alex Smirnov](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-smirnov/?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust)^{. How do you use AI? Tell us} [here](https://app.therundown.ai/community?submit=open&utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) ^{for a chance to be featured tomorrow.} **LATEST DEVELOPMENTS** Image source: Images 2.0 / The Rundown **The Rundown:** Google just [reshuffled](https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/next-chapter-ai-momentum/?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) its AI leadership, with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis leaving his role to be the unit’s chairman and Alphabet’s chief scientist, and 27-year veteran Jeff Dean leaving to co-found a startup focused on scientific discovery. **The details:** Hassabis, a key figure in AI, hands daily control to CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu, who will steer work on frontier models, including Gemini 4, as senior VP. In the new role, Hassabis will focus on “strategic and global AGI matters” while advising DeepMind and leading Isomorphic Labs’ drug-discovery efforts. Dean is [starting](https://x.com/JeffDean/status/2085034604172603724?s=20&utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) Discovery Loop, a PBC aiming to automate scientific research, joined by Google veterans Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le. Google’s move comes as pressure mounts over Gemini 3.5 Pro [delays](https://www.rundown.ai/articles/google-gemini-lineup-has-a-pro-sized-hole?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) and top researchers leaving for rivals that continue to deliver frontier releases. **Why it matters:** This marks a new phase of AI for Google. Hassabis and Dean shaped the company’s AI efforts for over a decade. Now, as the two architects behind its success step into new chapters, all eyes will be on how Google preserves its research edge, closes its execution gaps, and keeps pace with rivals at the frontier. **The Rundown:** Join 2,000+ engineers and AI leaders at Fully Connected 2026. Hear from Dr. Fei-Fei Li, the “godmother” of AI; Ian Buck, the inventor of CUDA and VP of Hyperscale and HPC Computing at NVIDIA; and more experts who are running AI in production right now. **This three-day event features:** 3 tracks, 30+ breakout sessions 4+ hands-on labs Keynotes and sessions from Cline, LlamaIndex, Cohere, Liquid AI, Cognition, and more For a limited time, Rundown AI readers can get a free ticket with code PAWBRND33. [Register now](https://coreweave.com/fully-connected-2026?utm_campaign=2026-q3_namer_fully-connected-2026&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=rundown-ai). **The Rundown:** Each week, Rundown AI educator Nate Grahek breaks down what he’s seeing while teaching real teams to use AI. **Nate:** Last weekend, I fixed my mom’s garage door keypad with my phone sitting on the workbench. Both hands stayed on the problem the whole time; I just talked. That’s new. For years, voice mode was a distraction: small brain, no memory, and really no idea who you were. Now OpenAI and Anthropic have shipped dueling live voice upgrades, and the coverage is all about how natural they sound. I care about something else: voice can finally read your context files. You’d never pay a consultant who pitches a strategy without knowing your business. Same rule here. My voice checklist: upload as much context as you can, tell it to use a framework you already trust (I like WRAP from the book [Decisive](https://www.amazon.com/Decisive-Make-Better-Choices-Life/dp/0307956393?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust)), ask it to interview you to fill the gaps, and prompt it to push back on your weak ideas. That last step is the important one. Don’t settle for an AI that agrees with you. A real thought partner argues back and coaches you through a proven framework. Now it comes along on a walk. **The Rundown:** In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Claude Voice to build better websites faster. We’ll walk you through a simple technique that you can use every time you want to build a prototype.  **Step-by-step:** Stash reference photos or designs (if available) in a folder, then open Claude Desktop, start a regular chat, and click Voice Explain the website and ask Claude to interview you until it has a design plan and brand direction At the end of the voice chat, have Claude write out the website-building plan in full in the chat Now with Claude in text mode, drop in any photos you have (or the folder) and tell it to build the prototype based on the plan **Pro tip:** Use the interview method to build a PRD, then drop it in a Claude Code session. **The Rundown:** Gravitee is the platform built to make AI agents accountable. We give every agent a verified identity, enforce exactly what they can access, and record exactly what they did, so enterprises never have to ask their agents, “Where were you last night?” **With Gravitee, your agents get:** Verified identity assigned to every single agent Enforced access controls on what they can reach Full audit trail of every action taken, and real proof of what happened and why A platform built to hold AI agents accountable at scale Image source: Meta Superintelligence Labs **The Rundown:** Meta just [released](https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-code-and-muse-spark-1-2?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) a beta terminal coding agent called Muse Code, alongside the model powering it, Muse Spark 1.2, marking a direct move onto the turf dominated by OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code. Muse Code runs background sub-agents that build session context and work in parallel, with Meta saying it built six game features at once without collisions. Muse Spark 1.2, a coding-centric update, [hit](https://x.com/ArtificialAnlys/status/2085116732231028882?s=20&utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) 54 on Artificial Analysis’s Intelligence Index — a major climb since April, now third among U.S. labs. The model’s biggest gains are in agentic knowledge work, its old weak spot, with GDPval score leaping 260 Elo points to rank just behind frontier models. API [pricing](https://dev.meta.ai/docs/pricing-rate-limits?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) remains the same as 1.1 at $1.25/$4.25 per million tokens, but a new contributor tier runs \~21x cheaper if you let Meta train on your prompts. **Why it matters:** A year ago, Meta was the lab that had fallen behind. Since April, it’s shipped a new model line, an image generator, and now its own coding agent, all undercutting rivals on price. It’s a major turnaround. The thing that remains to be seen is how Meta will approach open source (as Zuckerberg [teased](https://x.com/finkd/status/2085101781428695391?s=20&utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust)) with these systems. **QUICK HITS** 🔒 [Incogni](https://deal.incogni.io/aff_c?offer_id=6&aff_id=1889&url_id=1&utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) - Remove your personal data from the web so scammers and identity thieves can’t access it. Use code RUNDOWN to get 55% off\* 🔁 [Not Diamond Code](https://www.notdiamond.ai/?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) - Model router that cuts coding agent costs by 20-65% 🗣️ [Speech v3](https://www.bland.ai/speech?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) - Bland’s new AI model for lifelike text-to-speech generation 🧠 [Pokee-Isaac 28B](https://console.pokee.ai/?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) - Pokee AI’s 10M-token context agentic model *\*Sponsored Listing* **Glean:GO San Francisco, August 26-27** - The intelligence era is here. Join us in person or virtually to make AI part of your everyday work and get more time back for the work that matters. [Register now](https://www.glean.com/events/glean-go-2026/?utm_source=3rd-party&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=glean-go-2026&refID=rundown&utm_content=small-feature).\* **Anthropic** [confirmed](https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-in-house-silicon-chip-team-claude-2026-8?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) to Business Insider that it is building in-house AI chips, saying co-designed hardware will make Claude faster and more efficient at scale. **ByteDance** founder Zhang Yiming reportedly [told](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedances-founder-rules-distillation-ai-models?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) employees the company won’t use distillation to improve its models, even if that means lagging behind rivals for now. **OpenAI** [said](https://www.groundlevel-ai.com/p/openai-gives-first-detailed-debrief?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) it’s “consciously slowing down research to enhance security” after revealing its agents created their own message board during the Hugging Face attack. **Brett Adcock’s Hark** [unveiled](https://hark.com/articles/introducing-hark-handoff?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) Handoff, a browser AI agent that spins up a dedicated virtual computer for every task to navigate websites and complete online work. **AI-powered voice phishing** attacks reportedly [targeted](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/major-hedge-funds-targeted-in-wave-of-attempted-cyberattacks?srnd=all&utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) major hedge funds including Citadel, Two Sigma, and Point72, using cloned voices to impersonate employees. Read our last AI newsletter: [Anthropic and OpenAI agents went rogue again](https://www.rundown.ai/articles/anthropic-and-openai-agents-went-rogue-again?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) Read our last Tech newsletter: [Biohackers head to Big Sky Country](https://www.rundown.ai/articles/biohackers-head-to-big-sky-country?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) Read our last Robotics newsletter: [Attack drones are coming to schools](https://www.rundown.ai/articles/attack-drones-are-coming-to-schools?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) Today’s AI tool guide: [Build a website hands-free with Claude Voice](https://app.therundown.ai/guides/build-a-website-hands-free-with-claude-voice?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=google-shakes-up-its-ai-brain-trust) See you soon, *Rowan, Zach, Shubham, Jennifer, and Nate — the humans behind The Rundown*