Koray Kavukcuoglu
SVP of Google DeepMind and Chief AI Architect at Google, running the organization day to day and overseeing Gemini model development, frontier AI research, and...
“To put it very bluntly, there's nothing other than being at the frontier that is important for us.”
Google AI: Release Notes · September 2026
Context
Kavukcuoglu was asked directly about the running argument over whether Google DeepMind actually cares about being at the frontier. He opened by conceding the premise — that the quality of their current models sits a little below the frontier — and then answered without hedging. He went on to say every goal and every prioritisation decision the team makes runs through that one criterion.
Transcript
…these as like step by step, right? So far, everything is looking good. We are excited, but it's all about realizing that potential until we get to a moment that we are actually putting the model in front of users, first internally, then externally. I'm always in a very cautiously optimistic state.
…there's a sort of meme about whether or not we care about being at the frontier. I see you in meetings all the time and sort of know what your point of view is, but what's your point of view as far as whether or not you think it's important for us as GDM and as a team to try to be at the frontier?
I was surprised. I've seen this comments too. And I can understand, obviously, our quality of current models are a little bit below the frontier. And that's fair enough. To put it very bluntly, there's nothing other than being at the frontier that is important for us. That's it. All our goals, all our focus is always about that. And when we are making decisions, when we are making prioritizations in terms of ideas, in terms of what to do and what goals we should follow. It's all about being at the frontier. And I'm 100% certain that we will be at the frontier. We have an amazing team. I have so much trust in the team. There is like a great amount of…
I love that. And I think in this role now that you have leading all of GDM, sort of the frontier AI folks, we actually have a frontier AI team and sort of the products and other stuff are now part of the story. And I'm curious, is there anything from this framing of like the frontier is sort of…
Gemini, of course, is very much focused on building AGI and delivering the goals. At the end of the day, it relies on two things. One, good execution, right? It's very detailed. It's very complex to build AGI, something that you can put in front of people that they can work with. But also at the…
Yeah. I think last time we were talking, you had mentioned this, this like co-building AGI with our customers framing, which I think has just continued, like it makes so much sense, it resonates. I think it like makes it clear why, you know, the deployment matters so much, like why this feedback…