Google's Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer joins OpenAI after two-year return stint

2026-06-18 · Source: The Decoder · Field: Technology & Digital — Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Emerging Technologies & Innovation · Depth: Fundamental Awareness, quick

Summary

Noam Shazeer, a co-lead for Google's Gemini models and co-author of the influential "Attention Is All You Need" paper, has announced his departure from Google to join OpenAI. Shazeer, who served as Vice President of Engineering at Google, previously left the company in 2021 to co-found the AI chatbot startup Character.AI. He returned to Google in 2024 as part of a \$2.7 billion deal, which also brought back Character.AI co-founder Daniel De Freitas and parts of their research team, specifically to enhance Google's reasoning models. His move to OpenAI is considered the biggest AI talent story of the year, on par with Andrej Karpathy's recent move to Anthropic, highlighting the intense competition for top AI talent.

Key takeaway

For Directors of AI/ML strategizing talent acquisition and retention, Noam Shazeer's move to OpenAI underscores the intense competition for top-tier AI researchers. This shift indicates that even substantial investments, like Google's \$2.7 billion deal, may not guarantee long-term retention of foundational talent. You should proactively review your compensation, research autonomy, and cultural environment to mitigate the risk of losing key personnel to rival organizations.

Key insights

Top AI talent mobility significantly impacts leading AI research and development organizations.

Principles

• Key AI researchers drive frontier model development.
• Talent acquisition shapes competitive AI landscapes.

Topics

• AI Talent Mobility
• Noam Shazeer
• OpenAI
• Google Gemini
• Character.AI
• Transformer Architecture

Best for: Investor, Research Scientist, AI Scientist, Director of AI/ML, Tech Journalist

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by The Decoder.