Google Gemini Co-Lead Noam Shazeer Defects to OpenAI Ahead of IPO

Google Gemini Co-Lead Noam Shazeer Defects to OpenAI Ahead of IPO

Noam Shazeer, vice president of engineering at Google and co-lead of its Gemini AI models, announced on Wednesday he is leaving the tech giant to join OpenAI — the ChatGPT maker currently preparing for an initial public offering.

A Costly Departure

The move is a significant blow to Google, which reportedly paid $2.7 billion less than two years ago to bring Shazeer back from his own startup, Character.AI, along with a team of researchers. That investment now walks out the door to the competition.

Shazeer was appointed in 2024 to co-lead the development of Google’s Gemini model and has been credited as a key architect behind Gemini’s ability to narrow the gap with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The exact timing of his departure has not been confirmed.

A Foundational Figure in Modern AI

Shazeer’s credentials in the field are difficult to overstate. He joined Google in 2000 and was a co-author of the landmark 2017 research paper “Attention Is All You Need” — the transformer architecture paper widely credited with igniting the current AI boom.

His departure underscores the intensifying talent war among leading AI firms as they race to develop increasingly powerful models ahead of commercial and regulatory milestones.

Reactions From Both Sides

“I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together,” Shazeer wrote on X, adding that he was “excited” to join OpenAI.

Google offered a measured response. “We are grateful for Noam’s meaningful contributions to Google over the years,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.