Noam Shazeer joins OpenAI after two-year return to Google

Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI. On June 18, 2026, Shazeer announced the move, writing "It was a difficult decision to move on," on X.

What happened and when?

Shazeer announced his departure from Google on June 18, 2026, to join OpenAI, ending a return to Google that began in 2024. He served as Vice President of Engineering and co-led Google's Gemini models alongside Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals before the move.

The announcement follows a sequence of career moves: Shazeer originally joined Google in 2000, left in 2021 to co-found Character.AI, then returned to Google in 2024 as part of a $2.7 billion deal that brought him and co-founder Daniel De Freitas back with parts of their research team.

What was Shazeer's role and track record at Google and Character.AI?

Shazeer co-authored the paper "Attention Is All You Need," described in the coverage as arguably the most influential AI paper ever written, and he held senior engineering leadership at Google. At Google he worked on early projects including the search engine's spell checker, later serving as Vice President of Engineering and co-leading Gemini.

In 2021 Shazeer left Google to co-found the AI chatbot startup Character.AI. The 2024 return to Google came via a $2.7 billion deal that brought Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas back, along with parts of their research team, with the explicit task of improving Google's reasoning models. The coverage says those reasoning models "still haven't caught up with OpenAI and Anthropic."

Why it matters

Shazeer's move shifts a senior engineering leader and a high-profile research figure from Google to OpenAI, altering talent dynamics between the major AI labs. He co-led Gemini and was brought back in 2024 to push Google's reasoning work after the $2.7 billion return deal, so his departure removes leadership continuity in a program the coverage frames as trying to close gaps with OpenAI and Anthropic. The pairing of his technical pedigree, including co-authoring "Attention Is All You Need," with an operational leadership role gives the move significance beyond a single hire.

The coverage frames this as one of the largest AI talent stories of the year, comparing it directly to Andrej Karpathy joining Anthropic, which positions the change as part of a wider reshuffle among top AI research and engineering talent.

What to watch

Watch OpenAI's public research and product signals for new teams, projects, or shifts that reference reasoning, model architecture, or hires connected to Shazeer's prior work. Also watch for leadership adjustments at Google for Gemini, and any statements or moves tied to the 2024 $2.7 billion deal that returned Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas to Google.