Reuters: Google’s Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI.
Rohan Paul Twitter · Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) · 2026-06-18
Reuters reports that Noam Shazeer, Google's Gemini co-lead and one of the most prominent Transformer-era AI researchers, is departing Google to join OpenAI after Google paid $2.7 billion in 2024 to bring him back from Character.AI.
Extraction
Topics: ai-talent-movesgoogleopenaigeminicharacter-ai
Claims
- Noam Shazeer, Google's Gemini co-lead, is leaving Google to join OpenAI.
- Google paid $2.7 billion in 2024 to reacquire Shazeer and Character.AI talent.
- Shazeer is considered one of the most important model builders of the Transformer era.
- OpenAI gains significant foundational research expertise through this hire.
Key quotes
Reuters: Google's Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI.
He is one of the Transformer era's most important model builders.
Google reportedly paid $2.7B in 2024 to bring him and Character[.]AI talent back, then put him on Gemini.