Google Paid $2.7B to Keep Its Best AI Researcher. He Left Anyway.

In 2024, Google paid $2.7 billion to bring Noam Shazeer back. Shazeer invented the transformer...

domenica 21 giugno 2026 New tab

TL;DRAI

Noam Shazeer, inventore del transformer e co-lead Gemini, lascia Google per OpenAI nonostante il riacquisto per $2.7B nel 2024. Pattern ricorrente: researcher top DeepMind (Jumper/AlphaFold, Pang) migrano verso startup IPO-bound per autonomia di ricerca e equity upside. Compute crunch interno Google rivela che il talento, non la scala, è il vero constraint competitivo.

624 words~3 min read

In 2024, Google paid $2.7 billion to bring Noam Shazeer back. Shazeer invented the transformer architecture, the foundation behind GPT, Gemini, and Claude. Google said: "We can't lose this person."

June 2026. Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI.

This isn't one person's story. It's a pattern. Google DeepMind's best researchers are walking out the door to AI startups, one by one.

Who Left?

Noam Shazeer — The man who invented the transformer. Co-lead of Google's Gemini model. Google paid $2.7 billion to buy him back from Character.AI. Now joining OpenAI. (Reuters, CNBC, The Information)