Top AI Researchers Depart Google for Anthropic and OpenAI
Quick Look
- Google is experiencing a significant brain drain in its AI division as top researchers Jonas Adler, Alexander Pritzel, and John Jumper depart for rival companies Anthropic and OpenAI.
- This follows the recent departure of AI legend Noam Shazeer to OpenAI.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Top AI researchers are leaving Google for competitor firms, signaling a potential shift in the AI talent landscape. This trend raises concerns about Google's ability to retain its leading AI minds.
Top AI researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel are leaving Google for Anthropic, according to Bloomberg.
Per the report, Adler and Pritzel played key roles in the development of Google’s Gemini model.
TechCrunch reached out to Google for comment.
These departures are part of a concerning trend for Google.
Last week, legendary AI researcher Noam Shazeer announced that he was leaving Google for OpenAI.
Shazeer had been at Google since 2000, save for the three years he spent building his controversial chatbot startup, Character.AI (which Google effectively acqui-hired for $2.7 billion, in part to bring Shazeer back to work on Gemini).
Just days after Shazeer made his announcement, Google DeepMind director John Jumper said he was leaving Google for Anthropic.
Alongside DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on AlphaFold, which can predict 3D protein structures from animo acid sequences.
Open Questions
- What is driving these departures?
- Will more researchers leave Google?
- What is Google's retention strategy?
