DeepMind CEO Splits Day Into Two Shifts Because Who Needs Normal Sleep?

KEY POINTS

•Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has operated on a two-shift schedule with just six hours of sleep nightly for about a decade.
•He schedules his office day fully packed with almost no breaks, after which he spends family time and dinner before starting a creative night shift.
•Hassabis and coworker John Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein structure research, underscoring his commitment to nonstandard hours.

Demis Hassabis, the Google DeepMind CEO who apparently runs his brain like a Tesla factory during production hell, divides his waking hours into two work 'days.' For about a decade, he crams office hours with so many back-to-back meetings that calendar software must cry, then chops up his night from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. for deep thinking and creative noodling while the rest of us peasants snore. He clings to six hours of sleep as if less would fry his Nobel Prize-winning brain—a prize he snagged with John Jumper in 2024 for protein structure predicting, no big deal. Meanwhile, Elon Musk admits to floor-napping in Tesla factories, and Salesforce Marc Benioff somehow manages eight hours, probably by meditating through meetings.