TLDR
- Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, both key contributors to Google’s Gemini model, are leaving for Anthropic
- Nobel laureate John Jumper and star researcher Noam Shazeer also recently departed Google — Jumper to Anthropic, Shazeer to OpenAI
- Pre-IPO equity at Anthropic and OpenAI is seen as the primary financial driver behind the exits
- Computing resources were reassigned away from one of Shazeer’s projects shortly before he announced his OpenAI move
- Shazeer previously made hundreds of millions through a $2.7B Google licensing deal after cofounding Character.AI
Google is losing AI researchers — and fast. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, two key contributors to Google’s Gemini AI model, are planning to leave for Anthropic.
Alphabet (GOOGL) stock slipped 0.30% on the news. The departures come just days after Nobel laureate John Jumper also headed to Anthropic, and star researcher Noam Shazeer announced he was joining OpenAI.
Adler focused on Google’s AI coding efforts. Pritzel worked on training AI systems. Both were considered high-value internal contributors on Gemini.
The string of exits has rattled investors and raised fresh questions about Google’s ability to hold onto the talent it needs to stay competitive.
Google’s spokesperson pointed to comments from Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, saying the company remains confident in its AI talent position. Anthropic declined to comment.
The Pre-IPO Pull
The financial motive here is hard to ignore. Anthropic and OpenAI are both seen as IPO candidates, potentially going public in late 2026 or 2027.
For elite researchers, moving from a $4 trillion public company to a pre-IPO startup is one of the clearest paths to outsized financial gain. RSUs at Google offer solid compensation, but the upside is predictable. Pre-IPO equity at a fast-growing AI company is a different calculation entirely.
Shazeer’s career moves illustrate the point. He left Google in 2021 to cofound Character.AI, then Google paid roughly $2.7 billion through a licensing deal that brought him back. He made hundreds of millions on his stake in that transaction, per the Wall Street Journal.
Now he’s moved again — this time to OpenAI, which recently filed confidentially for an IPO. If he received fresh equity as part of the switch, he’s set up for another potential windfall.
Resource Shifts Added Friction
It wasn’t just money. In at least one case, internal decisions at Google appear to have added to the pressure.
Shortly before Shazeer announced his OpenAI move, computing power dedicated to one of his projects was reassigned to a London-based team at Google DeepMind. The move was described as an effort to improve collaboration and streamline pre-training work — the early phase of AI development where models learn from large datasets.
But for a researcher defined by access to compute, losing that resource is no small thing. It’s a detail that helps explain why financial incentives alone don’t tell the full story.
Google has been playing catch-up through much of the current AI cycle before gaining momentum in late 2025 with stronger models and custom chips. The back-to-back departures of Jumper, Shazeer, Adler, and Pritzel now put that progress under fresh scrutiny.
Adler, Pritzel, Jumper, and Shazeer did not respond to requests for comment.
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