This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Google (GOOGL, Financials) is losing one of the key people behind Gemini. Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering and co-lead of Google’s Gemini AI model, said Wednesday that he is leaving the company to join OpenAI.
The move comes less than two years after Google brought Shazeer back from Character.AI, the startup he previously led. Reports at the time said the deal was worth about $2.7 billion and included Shazeer and a group of researchers.
Shazeer was later named co-lead of Gemini, Google’s main answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. His work has been viewed as important to Google’s effort to stay competitive in generative AI.
I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together, Shazeer wrote on X. He also said he was excited to join OpenAI.
The timing of his departure was not immediately clear. For Google, the exit is a reminder that AI competition is not only about models and data centers. It is also about keeping the people who build them.
