TL;DRJohn Jumper, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, is leaving Google DeepMind after nine years to join Anthropic.
John Jumper, the Google DeepMind vice president who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating AlphaFold, is leaving the company after nearly nine years to join Anthropic. Jumper announced the move on X on Thursday, saying he would take some time to recharge before starting at the Claude maker. Both Google DeepMind and Anthropic confirmed the departure.
“Demis Hassabis took a real chance letting me lead the AlphaFold team just six months after finishing my PhD,” Jumper wrote. Hassabis, who shared the Nobel Prize with Jumper, responded publicly: “What we achieved with AlphaFold changed the world, and showed the field what was possible with AI for science and medicine, lighting the way for how AI can benefit humanity.”
The departure lands one day after Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer announced he was leaving Google for OpenAI, making this the second landmark talent loss for Google’s AI operation in 48 hours. Shazeer co-authored the 2017 “Attention Is All You Need” paper that underpins virtually every modern large language model. Google reportedly paid $2.7 billion to bring him back from Character.AI less than two years ago.
