Google Vice President of Engineering Noam Shazeer is leaving the company to join competitor OpenAI. Shazeer, who co-led the Gemini artificial intelligence models, confirmed the transition on the social media platform X. Google acknowledged the departure and expressed gratitude for Shazeer's contributions over several years.
Shazeer co-authored the influential 2017 research paper Attention Is All You Need. This work introduced the transformer architecture that serves as the foundation for modern large language models.
The executive returned to Google in 2024 to lead the Gemini project after previously founding the startup Character.AI. His move to OpenAI underscores the escalating competition for top-tier technical talent within the artificial intelligence industry.