Noam Shazeer, a titan in artificial intelligence research, is leaving Google to join OpenAI. The move comes just two years after Google paid $2.7 billion to acquire Character.AI, the startup Shazeer co-founded, effectively poaching him and part of his team.
Shazeer had been serving as vice president of engineering and co-lead of Google's Gemini project, where he was credited with narrowing the performance gap with OpenAI's ChatGPT. His departure marks a significant loss for Google's flagship AI model.
In a post on X, Shazeer confirmed the move, stating he was excited to work with the "exceptional team" at OpenAI. He acknowledged the decision was difficult, expressing pride in his former Google colleagues and their shared accomplishments.
Shazeer's influence on the field is profound. As an early Google employee from 2000, he co-authored the 2017 research paper "Attention is All You Need," which introduced the transformer architecture. This innovation underpins virtually all modern large language models and ignited the current AI boom.
His departure underscores the fierce talent war in AI, where top researchers command astronomical value. After leaving Google in 2021 over disagreements about product caution, Shazeer founded Character.AI. His return to an external role signals that even massive retention packages may not secure loyalty in this hyper-competitive landscape.