Noam Shazeer, a co-lead of Google's Gemini, is leaving Google to join OpenAI, as revealed in June 2026. The move comes less than two years after his August 2024 return from Character.AI.
June 18, 2026 · AI Talent War
Transformer Co-Author Noam Shazeer Leaves Google for OpenAI
A co-author of "Attention Is All You Need" and a Gemini co-lead is departing to become OpenAI's lead for architecture research — less than two years after Google paid a fortune to bring him back.
$2.7B
Spent by Google in connection with Character.AI to bring him back in 2024
<2 yrs
From his return to Google until this departure
1 of 8
Co-authors of the 2017 Transformer paper
A 26-Year Career Path
2017
Co-authors the Transformer paper "Attention Is All You Need"
2021
Co-founds Character.AI as CEO
2024
Returns to Google via ~$2.7B deal; becomes Gemini co-lead & VP of Engineering
Jun 2026
Leaves Google to lead architecture research at OpenAI
Why It Matters
OpenAI secures an architect behind the foundations of modern AI as the talent war intensifies.
Transformer
The architecture underpinning modern generative AI
Mixture-of-Experts
A method to scale models efficiently via specialized sub-models
Efficient Decoding
Cited as work that helped shape modern AI
Praise
Developers are impressed that OpenAI is gathering Transformer-level co-authors, recalling anecdotes such as dramatically improving Gemini's quality with only a few lines of code.
Concern
Some worry about the state of Google DeepMind and note the painful loss for Google, which paid heavily to bring him back. His concrete technical impact at OpenAI remains unclear.
Continue reading The rest of this article is for AI News Blitz readers. Choose an option below to keep reading.
Already purchased? Sign in ✓ Signed in — this article isn’t included in your current plan.Unlocking the full article…