In a major talent win for OpenAI, AI researcher Noam Shazeer is leaving Google to join the company behind ChatGPT, intensifying the battle among tech giants for top AI talent
BY PC Bureau
In a significant shake-up in the artificial intelligence industry, AI pioneer Noam Shazeer — one of Google’s most influential AI researchers and a co-lead of its Gemini models — has announced that he is joining OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
“I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there,” Shazeer said in a post on X.
Widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern AI, Shazeer’s move marks a major talent win for OpenAI and a setback for Google’s efforts to maintain its edge in the increasingly competitive AI race.
Shazeer, a longtime Google veteran, first joined the company in 2000 as one of its earliest employees. He left in 2021 after Google declined to release a chatbot he had helped develop, later co-founding Character.AI. In 2024, Google brought him back through a $2.7 billion acqui-hire deal involving Character.AI.
I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there.
It was a difficult decision to move on. I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together. It has been an honor and a pleasure to…
— Noam Shazeer (@NoamShazeer) June 18, 2026
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Reflecting on his departure, Shazeer wrote, “It was a difficult decision to move on. I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman welcomed the appointment, saying, “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’s influence on the AI industry extends far beyond Google. He co-authored the landmark 2017 paper that introduced the Transformer architecture, a breakthrough that laid the foundation for today’s large language models, including ChatGPT and Gemini.
His arrival comes at a crucial time for OpenAI as the company prepares for a widely anticipated initial public offering (IPO). The appointment is expected to strengthen investor confidence as competition among AI companies intensifies.
A mathematics and computer science graduate from Duke University, Shazeer displayed exceptional talent from an early age. As a teenager, he won a gold medal with a perfect score at the International Mathematical Olympiad and later helped lead Duke University’s mathematics team to top national rankings.
His move underscores the fierce battle for elite AI talent, with companies increasingly spending billions to recruit top researchers and executives. Last year, Meta brought in Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its Superintelligence Lab through a deal valued at $14.3 billion, highlighting the growing importance of talent acquisition in the race to build the next generation of AI systems.
