Indian-origin chess player Shreyas Royal won his maiden British Chess Championship title on Sunday at the age of 17, becoming the youngest player to accomplish the feat. Following his victory, his long-time sponsor and Google DeepMind co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis congratulated him with a special message.
Hassabis took to X to celebrate Shreyas’ achievement, saying he was pleased to have played a role in supporting the young chess player’s journey.
“Huge congratulations Shreyas - youngest ever British chess champion at just 17! Happy to have played a small part in supporting your journey to the top,” he wrote.
Shreyas secured the championship after finishing half a point ahead of Grandmasters Luke McShane and nine-time champion Michael Adams. Meanwhile, 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan became the youngest-ever British Women’s Chess Champion.
DEMIS HASSABIS HAS SUPPORTED SHREYAS FOR YEARS
The connection between Shreyas and Hassabis goes back several years. Shreyas’ family had faced financial and other pressures in the UK while supporting his professional chess ambitions.
In March 2023, Shreyas publicly announced that Hassabis had “come forward to sponsor my chess journey to be the UK's youngest GM.” Hassabis himself was a chess prodigy before pursuing computer science and neuroscience.
Shreyas later recalled that his father, Jitendra Singh, had managed to contact the Google DeepMind co-founder to seek support for his chess career.
However, their association began even earlier. Shreyas and Hassabis were paired together in the Pro-Biz Cup, which traditionally kicks off the London Chess Classic, in 2018, when Shreyas was only nine years old.
Hassabis’ backing has coincided with Shreyas’ rapid rise in chess. Before claiming the British Championship, Shreyas became Britain’s youngest-ever grandmaster in 2024 at the age of 15 years and seven months.
Hassabis also has a notable chess background of his own. He was once ranked as the world’s second-highest-rated under-14 player, behind Judit Polgar, before moving into computer science and neuroscience and eventually co-founding DeepMind.
He represented Cambridge in the Oxford-Cambridge university chess matches in 1995, 1996 and 1997, earning a half blue.
In 2017, DeepMind published a paper on AlphaZero, its chess-playing artificial intelligence system, which reportedly reached an elite level after just four hours of self-play. AlphaZero subsequently defeated Stockfish, considered the leading conventional chess engine, by 28-0 in a 100-game match.
