Founder Profile
Shane Legg
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Shane Legg?
Shane Legg is a founder of Google DeepMind, which was founded in 2010 with Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman.
- Company founded
- Google DeepMind
- Founded
- 2010
- Co-founders
- Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman
Background
Legg wrote his PhD thesis, Machine Super Intelligence, under Marcus Hutter at IDSIA in Lugano, Switzerland. His research on universal measures of intelligence informed DeepMind's long-term AGI framing.
Founding Story
Shane Legg is a New Zealand computer scientist and DeepMind co-founder who serves as Chief AGI Scientist. He met Demis Hassabis at UCL's Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, where both were postdoctoral researchers, and the two founded DeepMind with Mustafa Suleyman in 2010. Legg is known for early work on formal definitions of machine intelligence and has long focused on AGI timelines and safety. After the August 2026 reorganization he continues to report to Hassabis.
Shane Legg was born in 1973. Education: Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research.