Wall Street’s tech names had a rough Wednesday, with the Nasdaq dipping just under 1% after news broke that Google (GOOG, GOOGL) is overhauling its AI leadership team. SpaceX and AMD didn’t fare much better, both extending recent losses after earnings reports that beat forecasts still weren’t enough to satisfy investors.
Alphabet announced that DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is moving into a new position as chair of DeepMind and chief scientist across all of Alphabet. Stepping into his former responsibilities is DeepMind CTO and Google’s chief AI architect, Koray Kavukcuoglu, who becomes senior vice president for DeepMind and will now answer directly to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
The shakeup deepens with the exit of longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean, who is leaving to start a new venture, Discovery Loop, alongside Google senior fellow Sanjay Ghemawat. Investors reacted by sending Google’s stock down 4% on the day.
Elsewhere, SpaceX (SPCX) and AMD kept sliding as the market digested their latest earnings. Both companies topped analyst estimates, but that wasn’t enough to reassure investors — SpaceX shares tumbled over 13%, while AMD dropped roughly 7%.
