Google's battle to retain some of the world's leading artificial intelligence talent appears to be intensifying, with two more senior researchers reportedly preparing to leave the company for rival AI startup Anthropic. The latest departures would add to a series of high-profile exits that have raised fresh questions about Google's ability to hold on to key contributors behind its Gemini AI models. According to Bloomberg, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, both regarded internally as important members of Google's AI research teams, are expected to join Anthropic, although the moves have not yet been publicly confirmed by the companies or the researchers.Who are the AI researchers expected to leave Google Bloomberg reported that Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel are planning to leave Google to join Anthropic, the company behind the Claude family of AI models. Adler has worked on Google's AI coding initiatives, while Pritzel has specialised in training large language models. Both researchers are considered important contributors to the development of Google's Gemini AI systems and have also collaborated on major AI research projects within Google DeepMind.The reported moves come shortly after two prominent figures announced their departures from Google. Nobel Prize-winning scientist John Jumper is leaving Google DeepMind to join Anthropic, while Noam Shazeer, who helped lead the development of Google's Gemini AI model, is moving to OpenAI.Shazeer previously left Google in 2021 to co-found Character.AI before returning in 2024 through a licensing agreement that valued the startup at around $2.7 billion. His latest departure is another significant loss for Google's AI division.The significance of the departures The reported departures highlight the fierce competition for elite AI researchers as companies race to develop increasingly capable foundation models. Researchers with expertise in training frontier AI systems remain in short supply, making them some of the most sought-after professionals in the technology industry.Google has made substantial progress with its Gemini models over the past year, narrowing the gap with rivals including OpenAI and Anthropic. However, losing experienced researchers involved in model training and AI coding could pose challenges as competition continues to intensify.Anthropic continues to attract Google's AI talentAnthropic has emerged as one of Google's strongest competitors in generative AI while also maintaining a commercial relationship with the company. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives, the startup develops the Claude family of AI assistants and has rapidly expanded its research team.According to venture capital firm SignalFire's 2025 analysis, engineers at Google DeepMind were around 11 times more likely to move to Anthropic than Anthropic employees were to join Google, underlining the startup's growing appeal among leading AI researchers.Computing resources have also become a point of tensionBloomberg reported that shortly before Noam Shazeer announced his move to OpenAI, computing resources allocated to one of his projects were reassigned to another Google DeepMind team. The company reportedly made the change to improve collaboration and streamline work on AI pre-training.Access to advanced computing infrastructure has become increasingly important across the AI industry because developing frontier models requires enormous amounts of specialised hardware and processing power.Google says talent movement is normalGoogle has sought to downplay concerns about the recent departures. Speaking earlier this week, Google DeepMind Chief Executive Officer Demis Hassabis said movement between leading AI laboratories is common in today's highly competitive market.He added that Google continues to attract top researchers and believes it has the largest and broadest AI research organisation among the industry's leading companies.A growing battle for AI leadershipThe latest reported departures illustrate how competition among leading AI companies is increasingly centred on people as much as technology. While Google, OpenAI and Anthropic continue to invest billions of dollars in chips, data centres and model development, attracting and retaining world-class researchers has become one of the industry's biggest competitive advantages.If Adler and Pritzel complete their reported moves, Anthropic will further strengthen its research bench while Google will face renewed scrutiny over its ability to retain some of its most valuable AI talent.