Alphabet Names New ‘Chief AI Architect’

Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL) has appointed a new “Chief AI Architect” to its senior leadership team.Alphabet named Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google DeepMind’s chief technology officer (CTO), for the new senior vice-president role. As the Chief AI Architect, Kavukcuoglu will be responsible for ensuring that the company’s artificial intelligence technology is added to more consumer and business products. He will report directly to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. In a note to staff, Pichai wrote that Kavukcuoglu will help to “accelerate how we bring our world-leading models into our products, with the goal of more seamless integration, faster iteration, and greater efficiency.” The naming of a Chief AI Architect comes as Alphabet faces growing competition from other technology giants such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta Platforms (META).It also comes as pressure mounts from shareholders for the company to create A.I. products that can be monetized.Alphabet is viewed as a leading developer of A.I. technologies through its Google DeepMind laboratory. However, Alphabet has had mixed results when it comes to transferring that technology into products for commercial use and sales. To date, most big tech companies haven’t been able to show significant returns for their A.I. investment dollars.Still, Alphabet has committed to invest $75 billion U.S. into it’s A.I. infrastructure this year. The company announced a number of A.I. products at its annual I/O conference in May, including a new $249.99 U.S. per month subscription plan that includes early access to A.I. tools GOOGL stock has declined 6% this year and currently trades at $177.35 U.S. per share.