What is Demis Hassabis’ IQ?
Four different numbers, from four different quiz sites, and not one of them a test result.
No IQ test result exists for Demis Hassabis. What circulates instead is at least four different numbers from four different sites, agreeing on nothing except that his real record — chess mastery at 13, a Cambridge double first, a finished PhD, a Nobel Prize — was strong enough to guess at.
Demis Hassabis’ estimated IQ
- Reached chess master standard at 13, with a peak childhood rating of 2300 and the FIDE title of Candidate Master.
- A Double First (first-class honours in both parts of the Computer Science Tripos) from Queens’ College, Cambridge, 1997.
- A PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCL (2009), on the neural basis of memory and imagination, supervised by Eleanor Maguire and named one of Science’s ten breakthroughs of the year.
- Co-founded DeepMind in 2010; shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Jumper for AlphaFold’s protein-structure predictions.
Hassabis has never taken a public IQ test and has never commented on the figures attached to him. This range is inferred entirely from an unusually strong, well-documented academic and research record — not from any instrument built to measure intelligence.
- Born
- 27 July 1976, London
- Field
- AI research, business
- Education
- Queens’ College, Cambridge (Computer Science); PhD, UCL (Cognitive Neuroscience)
- Known for
- Co-founding DeepMind; AlphaFold; 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
What an IQ of 145–160 actually means
Set the claim aside for a moment. If someone genuinely scored in this range, here is what that would represent.
Average is 100 by construction, and about two-thirds of people fall between 85 and 115. Take the test to place your own score on this scale.
| Score range | Classification | Share of people | What it indicates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 85 – 114 | Average | ~68% | The range most people fall into. |
| 115 – 129 | Above average | ~13.6% | Roughly one person in seven. |
| 130 – 144 | Gifted | ~2% | The threshold most high-IQ societies use. |
| Above 144 | Highly gifted | ~0.1% | Figures above this range are extrapolated from the curve rather than measured. |
Percentages are approximate and describe a normal distribution. The same number means different things on tests with different standard deviations.
Thirty questions gives you a measured position on this exact scale — your score, your percentile and the ability breakdown behind it.
Find out in 30 minutes →Who Demis Hassabis is
Demis Hassabis was born in London in 1976. A chess prodigy in childhood, he worked as a video game designer and AI programmer — including on the god-game Black & White — before earning a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at UCL in 2009.
He co-founded DeepMind in 2010, which Google acquired in 2014. Under his leadership DeepMind built AlphaGo, which beat a world-champion Go player in 2016, and later AlphaFold, which predicts the 3D structure of proteins from their amino-acid sequence.
In October 2024 Hassabis and DeepMind colleague John Jumper shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, with the other half going to David Baker for computational protein design. He was knighted in 2024.
By Elora Mercer, Celebrity Research WriterFigures checked by Leon Falkner, Data & Research AnalystReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief · Last reviewed August 2026
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Demis Hassabis: the documented record
The estimate above rests on this record. Every entry here is a matter of public fact, which is more than can be said for the number itself.
- 1976Born in London.
- 1989Reaches chess master standard at 13, peak rating 2300.
- 1997Graduates Cambridge with a Double First in Computer Science.
- 2009Awarded a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCL.
- 2010Co-founds DeepMind.
- 2016AlphaGo defeats world Go champion Lee Sedol.
- 2020AlphaFold2 solves the decades-old protein-folding problem.
- 2024Shares the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; knighted.
Where the 170 figure came from
Following a claim back to its first appearance is the part almost nobody does — and it is what most people are actually asking.
Hassabis is a useful case because the underlying record is unusually strong and entirely public, which makes the estimating sites’ disagreement easier to see for what it is. Chess rating, degree class, published thesis and a Nobel Prize are all independently checkable. An IQ score inferred from them is still not a measurement — it is four different people’s guesses about what such a record implies.
The chess figure is worth being precise about. A rating of 2300 at 13 is a serious junior result, but it is a peak rating, not a title held for life — his FIDE-rated strength by 2019 was lower, at 2220. Reporting the peak alone, as most write-ups do, overstates how it reads today.
Nothing here diminishes the achievement record. It is one of the stronger ones on this site. It is also exactly why a made-up score adds nothing: the real facts already make the case.
How we read a number →On the neural basis of episodic memory and imagination; supervised by Eleanor Maguire.
NobelPrize.org. Confirms the joint award to Hassabis, Jumper and Baker.
Confirms his matriculation year and degree.
No biography, Nobel material or interview gives a tested score. The figures circulating online come from estimator sites, not from Hassabis or any examiner.
None cites an original source; each appears to be an independent guess from the same public biography.
The sources behind our estimate
The figures that circulate for Demis Hassabis, what we were able to confirm, and where the two diverge.
Numbers of 155, 165, 168 and 170 all circulate for “Demis Hassabis IQ”, each from a different celebrity-estimate site.
None of the four cites a source. Each site works backward from the same public biography — the chess title, the Cambridge degree, the Nobel Prize — and lands on a different number. One of them says as much outright, noting there is “no secret lab report” behind its own estimate.
A four-way disagreement this small is still a disagreement. If any of these numbers came from a real instrument, the other three would not exist.
Want a number that does hold up? Every figure on this page is somebody’s claim. Take the 30-question test and get a percentile you can check rather than a figure you have to trust.
Demis Hassabis — frequently asked
What is Demis Hassabis’s IQ?
No test result has ever been published. Estimator sites disagree with each other — 155, 165, 168 and 170 all circulate — which is itself evidence none of them measured anything.
Has Demis Hassabis taken an IQ test?
None on public record. He has never commented on any of the numbers attached to him.
What was his chess rating?
He reached master standard at 13 with a peak rating of 2300. His later FIDE-rated strength, in 2019, was lower, at 2220 — the childhood peak is the figure usually quoted.
What degree does Demis Hassabis have?
A Double First in Computer Science from Queens’ College, Cambridge (1997), and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCL (2009).
What did Demis Hassabis win the Nobel Prize for?
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with John Jumper, for AlphaFold’s protein-structure predictions. David Baker won the other half for computational protein design.
Why doesn’t this page give a single number?
Because no test exists to anchor one. The 145–160 range reflects an unusually strong academic and research record, not a measured score.
How does my IQ compare with Demis Hassabis?
You can find out in about fifteen minutes. The IQ Metrics assessment is 30 questions, scored on the same 100-mean scale used throughout this page, so your result and the estimate above are at least expressed in the same units — one measured, one inferred. Once you have a number, the leaderboard shows where it would sit, and how we score and norm it explains the benchmarking.
Where does this estimate come from?
From the documented record rather than a test — the method is named above and set out in full under how we read a number. Compare it against the other business & tech profiles, starting with Steve Jobs.
- Take the 30-question IQ test — get a measured score and percentile of your own
- Average IQ by country — how the scale behaves across populations
- How IQ Metrics scores its assessment — the method behind our own number
- More on how IQ testing works — reliability, error and what a score can and cannot say
- More business & tech profiles — same field, same method
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Photograph by Stansfield PL, CC BY-SA 3.0. Background removed for the portrait above. · Photograph by Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0. Background removed for the portrait above. · Photograph by Village Global, CC BY 2.0. Background removed for the portrait above.
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An estimate is an inference.
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