Google CEO names new search and ads boss, slides predecessor to CTO

Published

1 year ago

October 17, 2024

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Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president at Google, speaks during the US Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024.

Julia Nikhinson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google is replacing Prabhakar Raghavan, the company’s search and ads boss, with longtime Google executive Nick Fox.

The move was announced by Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who said that Raghavan will be moving into the role of Google chief technologist after 12 years of leading teams across the search company. Raghavan will continue to report to Pichai in the new CTO role, the company told CNBC in a statement.

“Prabhakar has decided it’s time to make a big leap in his own career,” Pichai wrote in a company blog post. “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 move comes as Google continues to restructure its teams to move more quickly in the AI arms race as it faces increased competition. The company also finds itself facing several antitrust lawsuits related to its search and ads business.

Fox has long been a member of Raghavan’s leadership team. He will be leading Google’s Knowledge and Information division, which includes the company’s search, ads and commerce products, Pichai said.

A Google employee since 2003, Fox has been vice president for the product and design for the company’s Assistant product in recent years. He previously worked within the company’s ads business unit.

“Over the past few years, Nick has been instrumental in shaping Google’s AI product roadmap and collaborating closely with Prabhakar,” Pichai wrote.

Raghavan led the knowledge and information unit since 2018. Earlier this year, Raghavan told employees to prepare for a different market reality because “things are not like they were 15-20 years ago,” CNBC reported.

Additionally, Pichai announced that the team working on Google’s Gemini app, which includes Google’s AI direct-to-consumer products, will join Google DeepMind under Google’s AI head Demis Hassabis.

“Bringing the teams closer together will improve feedback loops, enable fast deployment of our new models in the Gemini app,” Pichai wrote.

The move also means the Assistant teams focused on devices and home experiences will move to the Platforms and Devices unit “so they can sit closer to the product surfaces they’re building for,” Pichai wrote.

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Technology

Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’

Published

14 hours ago

November 21, 2025

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$Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup's robots could 'fracture a human skull'$

Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.

Figure AI

Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”

Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”

The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.

In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”

The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.

Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.

The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.

Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.

Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.

The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.

Read the filing here: