Google Loses Two Core AI Scientists in 48 Hours: Noam Shazeer and John Jumper Join OpenAI and Anthropic

In June 2026, Google DeepMind lost two heavyweight AI scientists within 48 hours. On June 17, Gemini co-lead and Transformer paper author Noam Shazeer announced his departure to join OpenAI; on June 19, Nobel Prize-winning chemist and AlphaFold creator John Jumper revealed he would move to Anthropic.

Background

• Noam Shazeer: Co-author of the Transformer paper "Attention Is All You Need." He left Google in 2021 to found Character.AI, which Google re-acquired along with his team for approximately $2.7 billion in 2024. Less than two years later, he left again to join OpenAI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called Shazeer "one of the people I've wanted to work with most since the beginning."
• John Jumper: Senior researcher at Google DeepMind, co-winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Demis Hassabis. His AlphaFold has predicted over 200 million protein structures, profoundly impacting biology and drug discovery. Jumper was also a core member of Google's AI coding development team.

Reasons for Departure

• Big Company Disease: Multiple commentators noted severe bureaucracy at Google, internal resource contention (e.g., resource battles during the Google Brain and DeepMind merger), and cumbersome cross-department coordination. Transformer co-author Llion Jones once said, "The bureaucracy makes me feel like I can't get anything done."
• Strategic Divergence: Google leadership lacked absolute faith in Scaling Law, even selling TPU computing power to competitor Anthropic. Google tried to cover all bases, lacking the "all-in on LLM" focus of startups.
• Incentive Structure: Former employees pointed out that Google incentivized creating new projects for promotions, leading to product duplication (e.g., multiple AI coding tools) and undervaluing maintenance of existing products.
• Compensation and Options: OpenAI and Anthropic are nearing IPOs, making pre-IPO stock options highly attractive to top talent, which mature listed companies struggle to match.

Impact and Industry Reaction

• Blow to Google: Shazeer's departure casts uncertainty over Gemini's future; one employee said, "He saved Gemini." Jumper's exit intensifies competition for Google in AI coding tools and AI for Science. Analyst Gil Luria noted that frontier AI labs are willing to pay any price for talent, and OpenAI and Anthropic benefit from less bureaucracy.
• Anthropic's Move: Jumper joining Anthropic signals its expansion from large language models into AI for Science. Anthropic had previously acquired bio-AI company Coefficient Bio and launched Claude for Life Sciences. This move could directly compete with Google's Isomorphic Labs.
• Industry Trend: SignalFire data shows Anthropic's two-year employee retention rate is 80%. Netizens commented, "The past 12 months have completely belonged to Anthropic," as its team has attracted multiple top talents.

Data and Current Status

• Google Gemini 3.5 Pro has been repeatedly delayed; public leaderboards show Gemini 3.1 Pro scoring around 46 points, trailing behind Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 (64.9 points) and Chinese open-source model GLM-5.2 (51 points).
• Internal employees revealed that the team is frustrated with the model dropping to "third or even fourth" place, and said, "Can't blame Noam for leaving; he won't be the last."