Google DeepMind CEO Hassabis Predicts AGI Within Five Years, Compares Impact to Ten Industrial Revolutions

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis predicts artificial general intelligence could arrive within five years with impact comparable to ten industrial revolutions compressed into a decade, while cautioning that AI remains overhyped in some areas. Hassabis claims approximately 90% of modern AI breakthroughs came from Google Brain, Google Research, or DeepMind, which merged in 2023. His leadership extends to Isomorphic Labs, which raised $600 million in April 2025 and expects oncology clinical trials in 2026 after releasing IsoDDE drug design tools. Parent company Alphabet is spending between $175-185 billion on capital expenditure in 2026, nearly double its $91.4 billion in 2025, with supply constraints rather than capital limiting expansion.

Google DeepMind's organizational transformation and competitive positioning

• ▪Gemini reached approximately 750 million monthly active users by the end of the fourth quarter of 2025
• ▪Sebastian Mallaby's biography of Demis Hassabis, titled The Infinity Machine, was published on 31 March 2026
• ▪Sebastian Mallaby's biography of Demis Hassabis was based on more than 30 hours of interviews
• ▪The formal merger of DeepMind and Google Brain completed in 2023
• ▪Demis Hassabis and John Jumper were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the AlphaFold protein-folding system, shared with David Baker
• ▪Demis Hassabis stated that approximately 90% of the breakthroughs underpinning the modern AI industry were produced by either Google Brain, Google Research, or DeepMind
• ▪Google Brain produced the transformer architecture in 2017
• ▪Demis Hassabis spoke on the 20VC podcast with Harry Stebbings in early April 2026

Hassabis's dual leadership role and Isomorphic Labs' drug discovery progress

• ▪Demis Hassabis runs Isomorphic Labs as a second workday beginning around 10pm
• ▪Anthropic acquired Coefficient Bio for approximately $400 million in April 2026
• ▪Isomorphic Labs states that IsoDDE doubles the accuracy of AlphaFold 3 for generating drug candidates
• ▪Isomorphic Labs expects human clinical trials in oncology later in 2026
• ▪Isomorphic Labs released IsoDDE, a drug design tool, in February 2026
• ▪Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million in April 2025
• ▪Isomorphic Labs has partnership agreements with Eli Lilly and Novartis with combined milestone values of up to $3 billion

Capital expenditure escalation and industry-wide competitive dynamics

• ▪SoftBank provided a $40 billion bridge loan to OpenAI
• ▪Alphabet spent $91.4 billion on capital expenditure in 2025
• ▪Alphabet has guided for between $175 billion and $185 billion in capital expenditure in 2026