Breaking

Noam Shazeer, Gemini Co-Lead, Moves From Google to OpenAI

June 18, 2026 at 11:00 EDT

Foundation Models
Recruiting & HR

Noam Shazeer, who served as a Vice President of Engineering at Google and co-lead of its Gemini models, said on June 17-18, 2026 that he is joining OpenAI. He described leaving Google as a difficult decision and voiced enthusiasm about working with OpenAI's team. Google has not issued a public comment on the move.

June 17, 2026 · AI Talent War

Transformer Co-Author Noam Shazeer Leaves Google for OpenAI

The "Attention Is All You Need" co-author and Gemini co-lead joins OpenAI as head of AI architecture research — a hire Sam Altman called "10 years in the making."

$2.7B

Google's 2024 deal to bring Shazeer back via Character.AI

<2 yrs

Time before the reclaimed talent departed again

2017

Co-authored the foundational Transformer paper

The recapture that didn't last

Google paid roughly $2.7B in 2024 to bring Shazeer back — then lost him in under two years.

$2.7B

2024
Reclaimed

→

2026
Departed

What he brings to OpenAI

Transformer architecture

Co-author of the 2017 paper at the core of modern generative AI

Mixture of Experts

Sparse models that expand capacity while limiting compute cost

Scaling & reasoning

Expected to bolster inference efficiency and reasoning performance

FOR OPENAI — a coup

A leading figure in Transformers and MoE strengthens research leadership amid the race with Anthropic and Google. Called one of the biggest talent moves in AI history.

FOR GOOGLE — a blow

A short tenure despite ~$2.7B spent, no clear successor for Gemini, and questions over whether Google has the tech but lags in execution and culture.

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