The 13 Executives Running Google and Alphabet’s Other Moonshot Projects

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still Ph.D. students at Stanford University when they launched a startup, called Google (GOOGL), dedicated to establishing an improved online search engine. The project, originally built from the duo’s dorm rooms and named “Backrub,” quickly took Silicon Valley by storm. Now, 26 years later, their venture is one of the largest tech companies in the world and the undoubted leader in search, with a trove of expanded features, such as Google Maps and Gmail.

In 2015, Page and Brin created the holding company Alphabet (GOOGL) to oversee Google and a plethora of other independent businesses it had either acquired or spun off, including YouTube, drone delivery, anti-aging research and autonomous driving. Today, Alphabet is the world’s fourth most valuable public company with a market capitalization of more than $2 trillion.

While Google has largely stayed true to its roots in search and innovation, it has also been forced to weather antitrust challenges and reposition itself amid industry advances like the A.I. revolution. Page and Brin stepped away from their respective leadership roles of CEO and president in 2019, leaving their conglomerate in the hands of a trove of executives overseeing its various divisions. Here’s a look at some of the top leaders in charge of Alphabet’s sprawling efforts:

Sundar Pichai, 52, CEO of Google and Alphabet

Pichai has been with Google for two decades. Starting off as a product manager in 2004 overseeing the development of Google Chrome and Google Toolbar, he was appointed CEO of Google in 2015 and took the helm of its parent company in 2019.

Pichai, who received around $226 million in total compensation in 2022, has a net worth valued at nearly $1 billion, according to Bloomberg. Before joining Google, he briefly worked at the manufacturing company Applied Materials and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Pichai, originally from India, holds a master’s degree in engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Ruth Porat, 67, president and chief investment officer of Google and Alphabet

Porat began her career at Morgan Stanley in the 1980s, where she eventually worked her way up to vice president and chief financial officer in 2010. Five years later, she left the investment bank to become the chief financial officer and Google and Alphabet.

Last year, Porat announced plans to transition into a new position as chief investment officer of the search giant and its parent company. In that role, she is in charge of Google’s and Alphabet’s corporate investments in areas like infrastructure, real estate and data centers. Porat also oversees the company’s “Other Bets” portfolio, which includes the self-driving venture Waymo and the drone delivery company Wing.

Anat Ashkenazi, 52, chief financial officer of Google and Alphabet

A year after Porat announced her plans to transition away from the CFO role, Ashkenazi, a former pharmaceutical executive, in June emerged as her replacement, tasked with shepherding Google and Alphabet through a future focused on A.I. “Today, the opportunity for impact is greater than ever, and I feel honored to be joining Sundar and his leadership team as they invest for the company’s future at such an exciting moment,” said Ashkenazi in a statement earlier this year.

Ashkenazi came to Google from a more than 20-year career at the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, where she first started in 2001. After a series of different roles spanning financial and operational aspects of the company, she became its chief financial officer in 2021.

Prabhakar Raghavan, 64, chief technologist of Google

Raghavan first joined Google in 2012 after a stint at its search rival Yahoo, where he oversaw the company’s search and advertisements division. He took on similar responsibilities at Google, taking charge of advertisements and commerce. In 2020, he was promoted to senior vice president of knowledge and information to oversee products like search.

Earlier this month, Pichai announced that Raghavan would be leaving his current job to become Google’s chief technologist and help the company pivot towards A.I. “In this role, he’ll partner closely with me and Google leads to provide technical direction and leadership and grow our culture of tech excellence,” the CEO said in a statement. Raghavan’s former role will be filled by Nick Fox, a longtime Google executive and member of Raghavan’s leadership team.

Philipp Schindler, 54, chief business officer of Google

As Google’s chief business officer, Schindler is in charge of the company’s global and regional sales for services like online advertising. He joined Google in 2009 to oversee its business in Europe. Schindler, who reportedly manages some 29,000 employees, formerly ran marketing and sales functions at AOL (AOL) Germany and worked at CompuServe. He began his career in the 1990s in a talent development program at the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann.

Liz Reid, 43, head of Google Search

Reid first joined Google more than two decades ago and made history as the first female engineer in the company’s New York office. Her early responsibilities included contributions towards enabling local results in services like Google Search and Maps. She spent the past few years leading Google’s core search experience and working on projects incorporating generative A.I. In March, she was appointed head of Google Search.

“I am humbled by the opportunity to shape the future of this important product,” said Reid in a LinkedIn post earlier this year. The executive noted that, in addition to improving the quality of Google Search through updated spam and ranking policies, she plans to continue focusing on the product’s new “AI Overviews” feature.

Thomas Kurian, 58, CEO of Google Cloud

Kurian has been with Google since 2018, when he was tapped to head the company’s cloud computing services division. //Was his first role CEO of Google Cloud? If so, I think we can merge the two sentences.//As CEO of Google Cloud, the executive has focused on introducing new pricing models, improving customer service and working more closely with its enterprise clients.

Kurian launched his career in the 1990s with McKinsey & Company, first as a business analyst and later an engagement manager. He subsequently worked his way up at Oracle during a 22-year career that saw him become president of product development within the software giant.

Neal Mohan, 51, CEO of YouTube

Mohan started his career at DoubleClick, an advertising company acquired by Google in 2008. The executive subsequently spent several years working in the ads space at Google before moving over to YouTube, //Which year did he move to YouTube?//which was acquired by Google in 2006, to serve as its chief product officer under then-CEO Susan Wojcicki.

After Wojcicki stepped down last year, Mohan was named her replacement. Under his leadership, YouTube has been focusing on new initiatives, such as supporting creators, live streaming and protecting children using the platform. Earlier this year, Mohan revealed that YouTube TV, its live television service, had 8 million subscribers and the company’s partner program paid out some $70 billion to creators and media companies over the past three years. Under Mohan, YouTube has also begun introducing new systems and policies to tackle deepfakes and misinformation connected to the advent of A.I.

Demis Hassabis, 48, CEO of Google DeepMind

Hassabis recently made headlines for winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, a project that helped solve the decades-long problem of protein folding. AlphaFold is just one of the many projects from DeepMind, the machine learning startup Hassabis co-founded in 2010 that was acquired by Google four years later.

DeepMind is also famously behind AlphaGo, the first A.I. program to beat a human world champion at the game of Go. Besides acting as CEO of Google DeepMind, Hassabis additionally heads Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet subsidiary founded three years ago to help accelerate drug discovery. He previously founded the computer games developer Elixir Studios and was the lead A.I. programmer at Lionhead Studios.

Dmitri Dolgov, 46, and Tekedra Mawakana, 53, co-CEOs of Waymo

In 2016, a self-driving car project at Google spun out of the company to become Waymo, now owned by Alphabet. Since 2021, Waymo has been co-headed by Mawakana and Dolgov. Dolgov was a co-founder of Google’s initial self-driving project and worked on the initiative between 2009 and 2016 before becoming Waymo’s chief technology officer. He also previously took part in efforts to achieve autonomous driving at Toyota and Stanford University.

Mawakana first started at Waymo in 2017 as global head of policy before becoming its chief external officer and chief operating officer. She formerly held roles in the legal departments of AOL and Yahoo.

Stephen Gillett, 48, CEO of Verily

Gillett is CEO and chairman of Verily, a health tech company formerly known as Google Life Science. It was spun out of Google’s moonshot factory, X, in 2015. Aiming to make health data more useful, it has been headed by Gillett since 2020. The executive formerly worked at Google’s X division and has also spent time in GV, an Alphabet arm focused on venture capital investments.

Gillett previously co-founded and helmed Chronicle, a cybersecurity company acquired by Google in 2019. Earlier in his career, Gillett held executive roles at companies like Best Buy and Starbucks (SBUX).

Arthur Levinson, 74, CEO of Calico

Levinson has been heading Calico since the biotech company was first established by Google in 2013. Focused on long-term research into health, longevity and aging-associated diseases, it was incorporated into Alphabet after the holding company was formed two years later.

Levinson worked as a Google director from 2004 to 2009 and was notably the head of the biotech company Genentech between 1996 and 2009. He has additionally served as the chairman of Apple since 2011. He reportedly owns more Apple shares than Tim Cook and has an estimated net worth of $1.4 billion.

Adam Woodworth, 39, CEO of Wing

Wing, a drone delivery venture, is another company that got its start at Google’s moonshot division before it became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2018. Initially co-helmed by Woodworth and James Ryan Burgess while in development at X, the duo divided their responsibilities after it graduated from the factory with Burgess acting as CEO and Woodworth serving as chief technology officer. Woodworth, who also previously worked at the aerospace company Aurora Flight Sciences, became Wing’s new head in 2022 when Burgess stepped away from his role.

Focused on residential deliveries, Wing in 2019 received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to deliver packages commercially with drones. It currently operates on-demand residential services across the U.S., Europe and Australia.