Observed Signal · Jun 24, 2026 · Hiring / Departure · Source: techcrunch · Impact: 4/5 · Sentiment: Negative
Top AI Researchers Leave Google for Anthropic
Two senior AI researchers at Google, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, are leaving the company to join Anthropic. The pair played key roles in developing Google’s Gemini model. Their exits add to a series of recent departures from Google — including Noam Shazeer, who moved to OpenAI, and Google DeepMind director John Jumper, who also joined Anthropic — highlighting an ongoing talent shift in the foundation-model industry. With OpenAI and Anthropic preparing for public offerings, the report suggests competing labs may continue recruiting top AI talent by offering equity and other incentives. TechCrunch contacted Google for comment but the company did not provide a statement in the article.
High-profile AI researcher departures from Google to rival foundation-model labs (Anthropic, OpenAI) can shift competitive dynamics in model development; with Anthropic and OpenAI preparing IPOs, talent flows tied to equity incentives could materially affect product roadmaps and strategic positioning of major AI platforms.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel are leaving Google to join Anthropic.
- Adler and Pritzel played key roles in the development of Google’s Gemini model.
- Noam Shazeer recently left Google to join OpenAI.
- Google DeepMind director John Jumper also left Google for Anthropic.
Connected Companies & Entities
5 Entities mapped“Top AI researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel are leaving Google for Anthropic, according to Bloomberg.”
“Top AI researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel are leaving Google for Anthropic, according to Bloomberg.”
“Just days after Shazeer made his announcement, Google DeepMind director John Jumper said he was leaving Google for Anthropic.”
“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 Goo...”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
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Google Expands AI, Faces Talent Exodus
Google is accelerating its AI and cloud push while undergoing a major leadership reshuffle and an exodus of senior researchers. The company reported 82% year‑over‑year cloud revenue growth as it aligns DeepMind with Google Cloud for enterprise use cases and balances investments in data centers, chips and model development. Demis Hassabis will step back to become Chair of DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, with Koray Kavukcuoglu taking operational control of Gemini and frontier research reporting to Sundar Pichai. Jeff Dean — and senior figure Sanjay Ghemawat — are leaving after 25+ years; Dean will co‑found Discovery Loop, which closed a seed round led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures and will initially use Alphabet cloud services. Markets briefly reacted (~4% share drop), while internal tensions persist over TPU allocation and commercializing TPU sales to cloud customers.
Google Gemini Co-Lead Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI
Noam Shazeer, Google's vice president of engineering and a co-lead of the Gemini AI models, announced he is leaving Google to join OpenAI. In a post on X, Shazeer said he looked forward to working with the OpenAI team and thanked colleagues at Google. Shazeer rejoined Google in August 2024 alongside researcher Daniel De Freitas as part of a DeepMind partnership tied to Character.AI, the startup the pair founded after leaving Google in 2021. The move highlights intense competition for top AI talent across major labs. The departure follows Google’s recent product reveals (including Gemini 3.5 Flash and Gemini Spark) and comes as OpenAI confidentially filed for an initial public offering earlier in June 2026.
John Jumper Leaves DeepMind for Anthropic
John Jumper, a Nobel laureate in chemistry who led DeepMind’s AlphaFold team, announced on June 20, 2026 that he is leaving Google DeepMind after nearly nine years to join Anthropic. Jumper noted in a post on X that DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis gave him an early opportunity to lead AlphaFold. Bloomberg reported Jumper had been a key member of Google teams working on coding tools that the company has struggled to commercialize. The piece also notes fellow DeepMind researcher Noam Shazeer recently left to join OpenAI. Jumper and Hassabis won the 2024 Nobel Prize for their work on AlphaFold, an AI model for predicting protein 3D structures.
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