Noam Shazeer is departing Google to join OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Noam Shazeer, vice-president of engineering at Google and co-lead of the company’s Gemini AI models, is departing the internet search giant to join OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.Shazeer joins OpenAI as the ChatGPT maker is preparing for a blockbuster initial public offering as the AI race intensifies among leading companies.“I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there,” Shazeer announced on social media.“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 honour and a pleasure to work with all of you.”Responding to the social media post, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said: “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.” See also Shazeer joined Google in 2000 and spent more than two decades contributing to some of the company’s most influential technologies.Early in his career, he worked on improving Google Search’s spelling correction and later contributed to advances in machine learning and natural language processing.He played a key role in developing technologies, including Mixture of Experts, large-scale language modelling systems and Google’s conversational AI efforts, including LaMDA.In 2021, Shazeer left Google to co-found Character.AI with former Google colleague Daniel De Freitas. The start-up became one of the most prominent AI chatbot platforms, allowing users to create and interact with custom AI personalities.Google brought Shazeer back in 2024 as part of a strategic licensing agreement with Character.AI, appointing him as a technical co-lead of Gemini alongside Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals.Shazeer studied mathematics and computer science at Duke University and is regarded as one of the most influential AI researchers of his generation.