Google’s (GOOGL) vice president of engineering and co-lead of the company’s Gemini artificial intelligence (A.I.) models, Noam Shazeer, is leaving to join rival OpenAI.
“I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there,” Shazeer wrote on social media.
Shazeer’s departure comes less than two years after he returned to Google parent company Alphabet.
In August 2024, Alphabet brought back Shazeer to its DeepMind A.I. unit as part of a partnership with startup Character.AI, which the pair founded after departing Google in 2021.
Shazeer initially left Google after the company declined to aggressively pursue an A.I. chatbot that he helped create. He subsequently co-founded Character.AI, a prominent startup firm.
That Shazeer is decamping to rival OpenAI highlights the ongoing battle for A.I. talent, which has become key in the competition among technology companies large and small.
The departure of Shazeer also comes weeks after Alphabet unveiled new A.I. products, including its Gemini 3.5 Flash model and Gemini Spark A.I. agent at its annual I/O developer conference.
OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT A.I. model, confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) earlier in June, setting the stage for one of the biggest technology listings in years.
GOOGL stock has increased 110% over the past 12 months to trade at $363.79 U.S. a share.
