Google loses Noam Shazeer to OpenAI and Nobel laureate John Jumper to Anthropic in the same week
Transformer co-author Noam Shazeer left for OpenAI on June 18, AlphaFold architect John Jumper and two Gemini researchers — Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel — joined Anthropic days later, costing Google four foundational researchers in under a week. With Anthropic at a $965B valuation and both Anthropic and OpenAI preparing IPOs, pre-IPO equity is now a structural pull that a public company with no equivalent upside cannot easily match.
Source: techcrunch.com ↗
As OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, this trend could continue — it's a great time for the companies to recruit top AI talent with a promise of equity.
TechCrunch
Why this matters
- → Google loses four foundational AI researchers to competitors in one week
- → Pre-IPO equity at OpenAI and Anthropic outcompetes public-company compensation
- → Signals accelerating talent drain as AI startups approach public markets
The great AI exodus