Noam Shazeer, Google's Gemini co-lead and Transformer co-author, joins OpenAI

Noam Shazeer, Google's vice president of engineering and co-lead of the Gemini AI models, announced on June 18 that he is departing Google to join OpenAI. Shazeer is one of the AI industry's most foundational figures, having co-authored the 2017 'Attention Is All You Need' paper that introduced the Transformer architecture underlying virtually every modern large language model. He is also credited as a key figure behind Gemini's ability to close the performance gap with OpenAI's ChatGPT.

The move comes less than two years after Google brought Shazeer back in August 2024 by acquiring his startup Character.AI as part of a deal reportedly worth $2.7 billion. Shazeer had originally left Google in October 2021 after the company declined to aggressively pursue a chatbot project he had championed. The latest departure underscores the intense competition for top AI talent among the major labs, with OpenAI preparing for a confidential IPO filing.

Shazeer's timing is particularly notable as OpenAI inches toward a public listing—one of the most closely watched tech IPOs in years. For Google, losing Shazeer again represents a significant setback after the company invested heavily to bring him back from Character.AI. The departure marks another chapter in what Shazeer himself described as a 'difficult decision,' and reflects the ongoing battle for foundational AI talent.