Noam Shazeer, Gemini Co-Lead, Leaves Google to Join OpenAI

Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering at Google and co-lead of its Gemini AI models, has announced he is leaving the company to join OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. The move is significant given Shazeer's prominent role in the field of artificial intelligence.

Shazeer shared the news in a post on X (formerly Twitter), stating, 'I'm excited to share that I'll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there.' He also expressed gratitude for his time at Google, saying, 'It was a difficult decision to move on. I'm incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we've built together.'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Shazeer's announcement, writing, '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!'

Shazeer originally joined Google in 2000 as one of its first 100 employees. He left the company in 2021 after Google leadership declined to release a chatbot he had developed, citing safety and reputational concerns. He then founded Character.AI, which Google later acquired in 2024 through an arrangement valued at $2.7 billion, bringing Shazeer back to the company.

He is widely recognized for co-authoring a seminal 2017 research paper on transformer models, which laid the groundwork for many modern large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT and Gemini.

Shazeer's departure comes as OpenAI is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). The company confidentially filed for IPO last month. His appointment could strengthen investor confidence as OpenAI moves toward going public.

Prior to his career in AI, Shazeer demonstrated mathematical talent from a young age. He won a gold medal with a perfect score at the 35th International Mathematical Olympiad as a teenager and later ranked highly in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition while studying at Duke University. He holds a degree in mathematics and computer science from Duke and briefly attended graduate school at UC Berkeley before leaving to join Google.

The movement of top AI talent between major technology companies continues to be a notable trend in the industry, reflecting the high demand for expertise in this rapidly evolving field.