OpenAI has scored a major recruitment win after Noam Shazeer, one of Google’s most prominent artificial intelligence leaders and a co-lead of Gemini, said he is leaving the search giant to join the maker of ChatGPT.
Shazeer, a Google vice-president of engineering and co-lead of its Gemini artificial intelligence models, said on June 17 that he will leave Google for OpenAI.
The move is notable because Shazeer is not just another senior engineer changing companies. He is one of the names closely tied to the modern AI boom, Google’s Gemini push, and the race among top labs to secure elite model-building talent.
A Key Gemini Figure Moves to ChatGPT’s Maker
Shazeer’s departure comes at a sensitive time for Google, which has been working to close the gap with OpenAI in generative AI.
The Straits Times reported that Shazeer has been credited as a key figure behind Gemini’s ability to close the gap on OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
His exact departure timing remains unclear. The timing of Shazeer’s departure from Google was not immediately clear, but his public message on X confirmed the move.
Business Insider reported that Shazeer said it was a difficult decision to move on and that he was proud of the Google team and what they had built together. Shazeer said he was “excited” to join OpenAI.
Sam Altman Welcomes a Long-Wanted Hire
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly signaled how important the hire is to the company. Altman wrote on X that Shazeer was one of the people he had most wanted to work with since the beginning of OpenAI.
Altman’s reaction shows that Shazeer’s move is more than a routine executive shift. In the AI industry, the researchers and engineers who understand how to build frontier models are often treated as strategic assets. Their decisions can influence model roadmaps, research direction, and the competitive standing of entire companies.
From Google Veteran to Character.AI Founder
Shazeer’s career has moved across several of the most important chapters in generative AI. Shazeer joined Google in 2000 and co-authored a 2017 research paper that helped catalyze the AI boom.
That 2017 work is widely associated with the foundation of today’s large language models, making Shazeer one of the figures connected to the technical roots of the current AI race. Shazeer was a key part of Google’s early AI development efforts and that his 2017 co-authored paper is largely seen as a starting point for present-day large language models.
Shazeer later left Google to co-found Character.AI, a chatbot-building startup. He spent a three-year period away from Google to cofound Character.AI before returning to the company in 2024.
Google’s Costly Return Deal Adds Stakes
Shazeer’s exit is especially striking because Google had only recently brought him back. The surprise departure comes less than two years after Google reportedly paid US$2.7 billion to bring Shazeer and a team of Character.AI researchers back to the company.
Google paid Character.AI US$2.7 billion for a special deal that gave Google access to the startup’s technology and included an agreement for Shazeer to work for Google again. Character.AI remains a separate legal entity.
The AI Talent War Gets Hotter
The move underlines how fiercely major AI companies are competing for researchers and engineers. Shazeer’s move comes as leading AI firms compete for talent while racing to develop advanced models.
Labs including OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic are offering large pay packages and using complex acqui-hire deals to attract top researchers and engineers.
For Google, Shazeer’s exit removes a high-profile figure from the Gemini effort. For OpenAI, it adds a veteran researcher with deep experience in large language models, consumer AI, and chatbot systems. More broadly, the move shows that the AI race is not only about chips, data, or products. It is also about the people trusted to build the next generation of models.
