Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering at Google and co-lead ​of its Gemini artificial intelligence models, said ‌on Wednesday that he will leave the company to join OpenAI. “I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there,” he announced in an X post.Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for IPO-bound OpenAI“It was a difficult decision to move on. I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you,” added the American computer scientist.A blow for Google?On X, the general consensus was that Noam Shazeer’s departure would come as a big blow to Google — the tech giant had, after all, paid $2.7 billion to rehire him in 2024.Shazeer had previously left Google in 2021 after the company decided not to release a conversational chatbot he had developed. He later co-founded Character.AI.In 2024, Google struck a $2.7 billion licensing deal with Character.AI that brought Shazeer and several members of his team back to the company.According to a Wall Street Journal report at the time, a key motivation behind the agreement was to secure Shazeer’s return to Google.Shazeer, 48, was among Google’s earliest employees and became a prominent figure in artificial intelligence research. In 2017, he co-authored the landmark paper titled ‘Attention Is All You Need’ with seven other Google researchers. The paper introduced the transformer architecture, a breakthrough that underpins many modern AI systems.Reaction to his departureOn X, Shazeer’s post announcing his move to IPO-bound OpenAI left many surprised. He has spent less than two years at Google after being rehired. His tweet has been viewed over 1.5 million times in a matter of hours.“This is likely the most significant AI talent move of the year. It makes you wonder what’s going on at Google,” one X user said.Tech entrepreneur Yuchen Jin called it “Brutal news for Gemini,” writing: “Noam Shazeer, the AI legend Google paid $2.7B to bring back two years ago, has left Google, to join OpenAI.”OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman said that he’s wanted to work with Shazeer for years. “Noam is one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of OpenAI. Only took 10 years. I think it will be worth the wait!” he wrote on X.“Google paid $2.7b to acquire him in 24 & couldn’t hold him 18 months later. That's pretty insane. I don't even know a good sports analogy that works here. Feels like they recruited AI Jesus,” one X account said.(Also read: IITian and ‘highly influential’ OpenAI researcher quits AI firm to join Meta: ‘Thrilled’)