# Noam Shazeer, Gemini Co-Lead, Joins OpenAI

> Noam Shazeer, a co-inventor of the Transformer architecture that underpins essentially every modern large language model, has left Google to join OpenAI as its Lead for Architecture Research, where he will focus on next-generation model designs. The hire is remarkable in part because of how recently Google spent to get him: it paid a reported $2.7 billion barely two years ago to bring Shazeer back from Character.AI, and now he is out the door. The move fits a bruising pattern for Google DeepMind, which has been shedding senior talent to rivals, including Nobel laureate John Jumper and researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel heading to Anthropic. Losing a co-lead on Gemini to your biggest competitor, right as that model line has stumbled, compounds the damage. Individual researchers rarely swing an entire lab, but Shazeer is about as close to an exception as the field has, and his choice signals where he thinks the most interesting architecture work will happen next. It is another data point in an intensifying talent war that money alone no longer seems to settle.

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

## Wortins' read

Noam Shazeer, a co-inventor of the Transformer architecture that underpins essentially every modern large language model, has left Google to join OpenAI as its Lead for Architecture Research, where he will focus on next-generation model designs. The hire is remarkable in part because of how recently Google spent to get him: it paid a reported $2.7 billion barely two years ago to bring Shazeer back from Character.AI, and now he is out the door. The move fits a bruising pattern for Google DeepMind, which has been shedding senior talent to rivals, including Nobel laureate John Jumper and researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel heading to Anthropic. Losing a co-lead on Gemini to your biggest competitor, right as that model line has stumbled, compounds the damage. Individual researchers rarely swing an entire lab, but Shazeer is about as close to an exception as the field has, and his choice signals where he thinks the most interesting architecture work will happen next. It is another data point in an intensifying talent war that money alone no longer seems to settle.

## Source

[Read the full story at CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/18/google-gemini-co-lead-noam-shazeer-leaves-for-openai.html)

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