Demis HassabisDemis Hassabis

Born 1976 in London; father Greek Cypriot, mother Chinese Singaporean. A chess prodigy from age 4, achieving master standard (Elo 2300) by age 13 and captaining the England junior chess team. Attended Queen Elizabeth's School in Barnet. At 17, joined Bullfrog Productions where he co-designed the classic game Theme Park (1994) with Peter Molyneux. Became lead AI programmer on Black & White at Lionhead Studios (2001). Founded his own game studio Elixir Studios (1998-2005). Then pivoted to neuroscience: earned a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from University College London (2009) under Eleanor Maguire, studying memory and imagination in the hippocampus. Read at Queens' College Cambridge for his undergraduate degree (Computer Science, double first, 1997). Co-founded DeepMind in 2010 with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. Google acquired DeepMind for ~$500M in 2014. Led AlphaGo (defeated Lee Sedol, 2016), AlphaFold (solved protein folding, Science Breakthrough of the Year 2021), and Gemini. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2024) alongside John Jumper for AlphaFold's protein structure prediction. In late 2025 Google's Gemini 3 and the viral 'Nano Banana' image generator helped lift Alphabet's shares ~65% on the year and reportedly pushed OpenAI to declare a 'code red.' At Isomorphic Labs he aims to move AI-designed drug candidates into clinical trials by the end of 2026, predicting a coming 'new renaissance' of scientific discovery.