Who is Demis Hassabis, the DeepMind founder who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry?

• Demis Hassabis won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
• Hassabis cofounded DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014.
• DeepMind focuses on AI applications that benefit society.

Demis Hassabis, the cofounder of the renowned artificial intelligence lab DeepMind, is recognized worldwide as one of the leading thinkers in his field.

Hassabis and his fellow DeepMind coworker, John Jumper, were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their work on protein structure prediction.

The achievement follows decades of advancements Hassabis has made in science and technology.

Nicknamed the “superhero of artificial intelligence” by The Guardian in 2016, Hassabis is a former child chess prodigy with degrees in computer science and cognitive neuroscience from the University of Cambridge and the University College London.

He founded DeepMind in 2010, which he sold to Google in 2014 in what was Google’s largest European acquisition at the time. DeepMind is now focused on applying its algorithms to areas that can benefit humanity, including healthcare and climate change.

Here’s a closer look at his life.