Google Loses Key AI Researchers to Anthropic Amid Industry Shift

Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, pivotal figures in the creation of Google's Gemini AI model, are moving from Google to Anthropic, Bloomberg reports.

Google has yet to provide a response to inquiries from TechCrunch regarding these departures.

This movement follows a series of significant exits from Google’s AI division. Recently, Noam Shazeer, a veteran AI researcher who had been with Google since 2000 except for a three-year period leading Character.AI, announced his departure to join OpenAI. Google had acquired Character.AI for $2.7 billion, partly to reintegrate Shazeer into the Gemini project.

Shortly after Shazeer's announcement, John Jumper, director of Google DeepMind, declared he was leaving to join Anthropic. Jumper, along with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their contributions to AlphaFold, a tool that predicts three-dimensional protein structures from amino acid sequences.

With OpenAI and Anthropic preparing for public offerings, these companies are positioned to attract top AI talent by offering equity incentives, suggesting this trend of departures from Google may persist.