# Google DeepMind Disbands AlphaFold Team, Redirects Key Talent to Gemini

> Google DeepMind is winding down the dedicated team behind AlphaFold, the protein-structure system whose work earned a share of a Nobel Prize. According to the report, VP and Fellow John Jumper and some colleagues have left, with Jumper joining Anthropic, while others are being reassigned to Gemini and general research after more than five years on the project. Importantly, this is not a shutdown of the technology. AlphaFold3 remains open-source and is already used by more than three million researchers across 190 countries for work on disease, crops, and antimicrobial resistance, so the tool itself continues even as the team around it disperses. What is ending is the concentrated, foundational research effort that produced it. The move reads as a signal about priorities. Redirecting some of the most celebrated scientific AI talent toward Gemini suggests a tilt from open-ended basic research toward commercial products, which is the pull every big lab is feeling. Whether that trade pays off is the open question, since AlphaFold is exactly the kind of breakthrough that pure product roadmaps rarely produce.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Engadget · Published Wednesday, September 9, 2026_

## Wortins' read

Google DeepMind is winding down the dedicated team behind AlphaFold, the protein-structure system whose work earned a share of a Nobel Prize. According to the report, VP and Fellow John Jumper and some colleagues have left, with Jumper joining Anthropic, while others are being reassigned to Gemini and general research after more than five years on the project. Importantly, this is not a shutdown of the technology. AlphaFold3 remains open-source and is already used by more than three million researchers across 190 countries for work on disease, crops, and antimicrobial resistance, so the tool itself continues even as the team around it disperses. What is ending is the concentrated, foundational research effort that produced it. The move reads as a signal about priorities. Redirecting some of the most celebrated scientific AI talent toward Gemini suggests a tilt from open-ended basic research toward commercial products, which is the pull every big lab is feeling. Whether that trade pays off is the open question, since AlphaFold is exactly the kind of breakthrough that pure product roadmaps rarely produce.

## Source

[Read the full story at Engadget](https://www.engadget.com/2225849/google-shuts-down-alphafold/)

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