Google's top Gemini engineer is leaving for OpenAI less than two years after a $2.7 billion return

Ironic. I was having dinner last night with Noam and he remarked, "Snitz I don't think they're paying you enough."

I literally got sick to me stomach. I work like a dog, tirelessly producing tabloid platinum and Shazeer makes all the money. His house is larger than mine, his private jet is better. On the other hand he's really awkward at parties & his wife is not blessed with looks, personality or grace.

I guess there is poetic justice in this world.

Google's top Gemini engineer is leaving for OpenAI less than two years after a $2.7 billion return

The move comes less than two years after Google paid $2.7 billion to bring Shazeer back from his AI startup Character.AI

By Cris Tolomia, Quartz Media

Updated Thursday

Noam Shazeer, who held the title of vice president of engineering at Google $GOOGL +1.17% and shared leadership of its Gemini AI models, has departed to take a role at OpenAI.

"I'm excited to share that I'll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there," Shazeer said in a post on X $TWTR 0.00%. "It was a difficult decision to move on. I'm incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we've built together."

His exit arrives not even two years after he rejoined Google's DeepMind unit in August 2024, when the company struck a partnership with Character.AI — the chatbot startup Shazeer had helped launch after leaving Google in 2021 alongside researcher Daniel De Freitas. The $2.7 billion arrangement secured Google non-exclusive rights to Character.AI's technology while also requiring Shazeer to return to work at the search giant, according to Reuters. Character.AI remains a separate legal entity.

Shazeer first joined Google in 2000. He co-authored a 2017 research paper widely credited with catalyzing the development of modern large language models. When Google opted against aggressively developing a chatbot concept that Shazeer and De Freitas had pushed internally, the two researchers departed and went on to build Character.AI; Shazeer eventually made his way back to Google in August 2024, according to CNBC.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman welcomed the hire on X, writing that Shazeer "is one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of openai," adding "only took 10 years."

"We are grateful for Noam's meaningful contributions to Google over the years," Google said.

The move is the latest reshuffling of senior AI talent across the industry's leading labs. Top labs have been dangling outsized compensation and engineering complex acquisition-style arrangements to pull talented researchers from rivals, according to Business Insider. Earlier this month, OpenAI submitted a confidential IPO filing, a move that would take the ChatGPT maker public.