AI has moved at breakneck pace over the last few years, and it’s taken some superhuman efforts from the humans behind it to make it happen
Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, has offered a rare glimpse into the relentless intensity of leading one of the world’s most advanced AI research labs. In a discussion about his work routine, Hassabis revealed that he hasn’t experienced a moment of comfort in years, describing a grueling schedule that includes 100-hour work weeks and late-night thinking sessions that extend until 4 AM.
When asked whether he ever feels comfortable, given the intensity of competition in the AI space, Hassabis was unequivocal. “You never feel comfortable. For the last, I would say three, four years, it’s been unbelievably intense. And, you know, 100-hour weeks (for) 50 weeks a year. And that’s the norm. And I think that’s what you have to do at the forefront of this unbelievably fast-moving technology.”
The DeepMind chief emphasized the unprecedented competitive pressures in the AI space: “It’s ferociously competitive out there. Maybe the most intense competition there’s ever been in technology. And the stakes are incredibly high—AGI and, you know, all of that can mean so commercially, scientifically.”
But Hassabis also revealed that the punishing schedule isn’t purely driven by competitive necessity. There’s a personal passion that keeps him working through the night: “And then if you add all the excitement of what we’re doing, and, you know, using it as my passion, as you know, is exploring scientific problems with accelerating scientific discovery itself. This is what I’ve always dreamed about and I’ve worked my whole life on AI towards this moment. So it’s sort of hard to sleep because there’s so much work to do, but also there’s so much exciting things to look into and to push forward.”
Hassabis already has an unconventional routine with regards to his work. He goes in to work at 10 in the morning, comes back and spends some time with his family. But that’s when his second day starts. He starts working again at around10 in the night, and goes on till 4 in the morning. “Usually, that’s the time when I do my research. So I’ll be reading about the latest academic papers. I like doing all of my kind of creative thinking in the small hours of the morning,” he’s previously said. As such, Hassabis is able to get two working days out of one to balance his dual roles as CEO of Google DeepMind and a researcher who wants to be at the cutting edge of the developments in AI.
Hassabis’s comments reflect a broader trend across the AI industry, where the race to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) has intensified competition between tech giants and research labs. DeepMind’s recent results, including the successful Gemini 3 model, Nano Banana and Genie 3 have put it at the pole position in the AI race. The implications of such demanding work cultures at AI’s cutting edge, however, raise important questions about sustainability and burnout in an industry that shows no signs of slowing down — xAI co-founder Greg Yang mentioned his grueling schedule while saying that he was stepping aside from his post to fight his Lupus diagnosis. “So while some folks have said “you shouldn’t have pushed yourself so hard,” I’m glad I did. I found this issue early, and now I can fix it so I can push myself even harder when I rebound,” he’d said. And as the stakes continue to rise and the technology advances at an unprecedented pace, leaders like Hassabis appear willing to sacrifice personal comfort for what they see as a historic opportunity to reshape science and technology.