Tech

Google’s AI architect lived rent-free in Elon Musk’s head

As the Musk v. Altman trial unfolds, a pivotal figure remains in the shadows: Demis Hassabis, the architect of Google's in-house AI lab, whose influential work on AlphaFold and other breakthroughs has quietly reshaped the tech giant's AI research agenda. Hassabis' trajectory from DeepMind founder to Google executive has been marked by strategic acquisitions and innovative AI solutions. His understated impact belies the profound implications for the field. AI-assisted, human-reviewed.

Chris L (AI-assisted) May 5, 2026 1 min read EN

Overview

Court documents and testimony from the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial reveal that Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, was a central fixation for Elon Musk and OpenAI's early leadership. Hassabis founded DeepMind in 2010, sold it to Google in 2014 for a reported $400-650 million, and now leads Google Gemini, the former Google Brain team, and the for-profit spin-off Isomorphic Labs. His quiet influence shaped Google's AI research agenda—and, according to the trial record, drove OpenAI's founding and strategic decisions.

What the trial reveals

During testimony, OpenAI president Greg Brockman stated that Musk talked about Hassabis “many, many times” in OpenAI's early years, calling Musk “very consistent and fixated” on him. At one AI-focused dinner with Altman and Musk, Brockman recalled Musk's first question: “Is Demis Hassabis evil?”

Musk's emails from 2016 show his alarm after a dinner with Hassabis before OpenAI's founding. “I feel like they are playing the Super Bowl and we are playing the Puppy Bowl,” Musk wrote to Brockman and Ilya Sutskever. “Unless we want to have our ass handed to us, we need to step up our game dramatically.”

The competition escalates

By 2016, Hassabis had already pushed back against OpenAI's open-source stance. In a message forwarded by Musk, Hassabis wrote that open-sourcing AI was “actually very dangerous,” adding, “I presume you realise that this is not some sort of panacea that will somehow magically solve the AI problem?”

In 2017, Musk wrote to Neuralink associates: “Deepmind is moving very fast. I am concerned that OpenAI is not on a path to catch up. Setting it up as a non-profit might, in hindsight, have been the wrong move.” By early 2018, Musk wrote that OpenAI was “on a path of certain failure relative to Google” and suggested folding it into Tesla for better resources.

Personal pleas to slow Hassabis

Shivon Zilis, then an OpenAI board member and now a parent of Musk's children, wrote a personal plea to Musk: “There is a very low probability of a good future if someone doesn't slow Demis down. Slowing him down is the only nonnegotiable net good action I can see.” Musk responded that he doubted he could do so “in a meaningful way.”

Zilis also relayed rumors that some in AI circles distrusted Hassabis enough to meet in a London coffee shop without cell phones, fearing surveillance of their email and chat.

The outcome

By November

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