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Google Gemini co-lead leaves for OpenAI less than 2 years after billion-dollar rehire Noam Shazeer, Google's Gemini co-lead and self-described inventor of the LLM revolution, is leaving for OpenAI less than two years after Google paid a reported $2.7 billion to rehire him from Character. AI. The vice president of engineering called it a "difficult decision to move on." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who pursued Shazeer for a decade, hailed the hire as "worth the wait" as the AI talent war intensifies.

A Google veteran who founded Character.AI is jumping to OpenAI Noam Shazeer, a co-lead at Gemini and the founder of Character.AI is leaving Google tojoin OpenAIin the latest AI talent war move. In an X post on Wednesday, Shazeer announced his departure and said he looks forward to working with the "exceptional team" at the ChatGPT maker. "It was a difficult decision to move on. I'm incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we've built together," Shazeer wrote. "It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you." In a Wednesday X post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Shazeer "is one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of openai." noam is one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of openai.only took 10 years.i think it will be worth the wait!https://t.co/Hj2fjCywjv The Gemini co-lead joined Google in 2000 and stayed with the company, aside from a three-year period when he left to cofound thechatbot-building startup Character.AI. In 2024, the search giant rehired the founders and paid for non-exclusive rights to use the startup's technology. Character.AI remains a separate legal entity. …

Google Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer leaves for OpenAI - CNBC Google's vice president of engineering and a co-lead of its Gemini AI models Noam Shazeer announced Wednesday that he was leaving the company to join OpenAI. "I'm excited to share that I'll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there," Shazeersaid in a post on X. "It was a difficult decision to move on. I'm incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we've built together. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you," he added. Shazeer's departure comesless than two yearsafter he returned to Google. In August 2024, Google brought back Shazeer and fellow researcher Daniel De Freitas to its DeepMind AI unit as part of a partnership with startup Character.AI, which the pair founded after leaving Google in 2021. The two had left Google after it declined to aggressively pursue a chatbot project they had championed. They subsequently founded Character.AI, one of the most prominent AI startups. The latest move underscores the intense battle for top AI talent, which has become a key front in competition among technology companies. The departure also comes we…

Google Gemini Co-Lead Noam Shazeer Leaves for OpenAI Amid AI Talent ... Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering at Google and one of the leaders behind the company’s Gemini artificial intelligence models, has announced that he is leaving Google to join OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The move highlights the growing competition among major AI companies to attract and retain top talent as the race to develop more advanced artificial intelligence systems intensifies. Shazeer revealed his decision in a statement shared on social media on Wednesday. While confirming his departure from Google, he did not disclose when he will officially begin his new role at OpenAI. The announcement comes less than two years after Google spent approximately $2.7 billion to bring Shazeer back into the company’s AI division. At the time, Google secured the return of Shazeer and several researchers associated with Character.AI, the startup he previously helped lead. The deal was widely viewed as a strategic effort to strengthen Google’s position in the rapidly evolving AI market. In 2024, Shazeer was appointed as a co-leader of the Gemini AI project, one of Google’s flagship artificial intelligence i…

Google Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving for OpenAI Noam Shazeer is best known as one of the co-authors of the 2017 “Attention Is All You Need” paper, which introduced the Transformer architecture that now powers most large language models. He also worked on several major Google AI projects, including LaMDA, before leaving the company in 2021 to co-found Character.AI . He also authored the Sparsely-gated Mixture of Experts (2016) paper, which is popular among the AI community. After falling behind OpenAI and Anthropic a couple of years ago, Google brought Shazeer back in 2024 as part of a major deal with Character.AI. Through this deal, along with Noam, several other researchers returned to Google DeepMind. More recently, he was a vice president of engineering at Google and a technical co-lead for Gemini. Today, Noam Shazeer announced on X that he is leaving Google and joining OpenAI. In his post, Shazeer said it was a difficult decision to move on, adding that he was proud of the Google team and what it had built together. I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there. It was a difficult decision to move on. I’m …

Google's Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving for OpenAI - TNW Image by: Shutetrstock Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI. The man widely credited as a principal architect of Google’s Gemini models and a co-author of the 2017 transformer paper that underpins virtually every modern large language model announced the move himself , on X: “I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there.” The departure is striking for its speed. Shazeer returned to Google less than two years ago in a deal that was itself remarkable: the company reportedly paid around $2.7bn to bring him back, along with a team of his researchers, from Character.AI, the startup he had co-founded after leaving Google the first time. To lose him again, this quickly, to the company Google most directly competes with, is the kind of talent loss that money was supposed to prevent. Shazeer is a vice president of engineering at Google and a co-leader of the Gemini effort. As one of the authors of “Attention Is All You Need”, the paper that introduced the transformer architecture, he is among a small group of researchers whose work sits underneath ChatGPT, C…

In a major talent acquisition, Character.AI co-founder and Google veteran Noam Shazeer is leaving his company to join rival OpenAI, intensifying the AI industry's competition for top researchers. https://hmjournal.com/en/post/characterai-co-founder-and-google-veteran-noam-shazeer-joins-openai

Google Acquires Character.AI Talent and Tech in Strategic Move Character.AI followed an emerging pattern for ambitious AI startups, trading its leadership to a tech giant in exchange for funds and a strategic makeover. What’s new: Google hired Character.AI’s co-founders and other employees and paid an undisclosed sum for nonexclusive rights to use Character.AI’s technology, The Information reported . The deal came shortly after Microsoft and Inflection and Amazon and Adept struck similar agreements. New strategy: Character.AI builds chatbots that mimic personalities from history, fiction, and popular culture. When it started, it was necessary to build foundation models to deliver automated conversation, the company explained in a blog post. However, “the landscape has shifted” and many pretrained models are available. Open models enable the company to focus its resources on fine-tuning and product development under its new CEO, former Character.AI general counsel Dom Perella. Licensing revenue from Google will help Character.AI to move forward. Character.AI co-founders Daniel De Freitas and Noam Shazeer, both of whom worked for Google prior to founding Character.AI, returned. (You…