Noam Shazeer<\/strong>, 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 \u2014 the ChatGPT maker currently preparing for an initial public offering.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The move is a significant blow to Google, which reportedly paid $2.7 billion<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Shazeer’s credentials in the field are difficult to overstate. He joined Google in 2000<\/strong> and was a co-author of the landmark 2017 research paper “Attention Is All You Need”<\/em> \u2014 the transformer architecture paper widely credited with igniting the current AI boom.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u2014 the ChatGPT maker currently preparing for an initial public offering. A Costly Departure The move is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","stackable_optimized_css":"","stackable_optimized_css_raw":"a:0:{}"},"categories":[19,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","category-trending"],"blocksy_meta":[],"custom_fields":{"stackable_optimized_css":"","stackable_optimized_css_raw":[]},"yoast_head":"\nA Costly Departure<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
A Foundational Figure in Modern AI<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Reactions From Both Sides<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n