Google Lost the Transformer's Co-Author. Then AlphaFold. Same Week.

Short summary

Noam Shazeer, co-author of the 2017 transformer paper underlying all modern LLMs, left Google for OpenAI as Lead for Architecture Research after less than two years, despite a $2.7B acquisition. Simultaneously, DeepMind researcher John Jumper (AlphaFold, Nobel Prize) joined Anthropic. These back-to-back departures expose Google's vulnerability in the AI talent war and signal where breakthrough capabilities are expected next.

• •Transformer co-author Noam Shazeer moves from Google to OpenAI's architecture research
• •Nobel laureate John Jumper leaves DeepMind for Anthropic same week
• •Departures signal talent migration toward next-generation breakthroughs; Google loses control of its foundational IP

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.