Demis Hassabis

Demis Hassabis is a thought leader in AI, best known as the CEO of DeepMind he sold the innovative company to Google with co-founders Mustafa Suleyman and Shane Legg in 2014. On a mission to solve humanity’s greatest challenges, Demis is developing AGI, a technology with the potential to think, learn and create solutions to complex problems. Through his pioneering work on reinforcement learning and deep learning, Demis played a substantial role in the development of AI. With AI technology being developed at an unprecedented scale, he is currently urging caution and calling for guardrails to protect people from the risks of AI in his speaking engagements.

A child genius, Demis showed great intellectual prowess from an early age. He taught himself to code using books and became one of the best chess players in the world at just 12 years old. Earning his A-levels a year earlier than his age group, he joined Bullfrog Productions, designing the game Theme Park with Peter Molyneux before attending Cambridge University. Demis obtained a degree in Computer Science at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

After completing his degree, he became a Lead AI Programmer at Lionhead Studios. With a passion for gaming, he founded Elixir Studios, a leading games development firm commissioned to create games by notable clients such as Microsoft. Enjoying a reputation for excellence in the gaming industry, Demis became the Executive Designer on the BAFTA-nominated games Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius. In 2009, Demis attended University College London to earn a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, seeking to learn more about the human brain for new AI algorithms. Following that, he completed a research fellowship at the Gatsby Computation Neuroscience Unit at UCL.

The recipient of several awards and accolades, Demis won the Global Swiss AI Award, the Princess of Asturias Award, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, and was most recently co-awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing AlphaFold. He is also named in The 100 Most Influential People by Time, WIRED’s Smart 50, and the 50 Most Influential People in Britain by British GQ. An altruistic individual, Demis seeks to build a future where AI is used to benefit humanity. However, recognising the potential for such technology to be used by bad actors, he is outspoken about the need for robust regulations to protect people from the malicious use of AI. An eminent speaker on the future of AI, book Demis Hassabis now!

Leading breakthroughs in AGI, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has been officially inducted to the world’s top voted 20 keynote speakers on AI.