Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering at Google and co-lead of its Gemini AI models, announced on Thursday that he is leaving the company to join rival OpenAI.
“I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there,” Shazeer wrote on X.
“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.” he added.
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
Meanwhile, Sam Altman quote tweeted Noam’s post and said, “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!”
Who Is Noam Shazeer?
Shazeer is widely regarded as one of the most consequential figures in modern artificial intelligence. He is an alumni of Duke University, North Carolina, USA.
He co-authored the 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which introduced the transformer architecture that underpins virtually every major large language model in existence today, from OpenAI’s GPT series to Google’s own Gemini.
Shazeer first joined Google in 2000. He later left the company to lead Character.AI, a conversational AI startup he co-founded, before returning to Google in 2024 when the company paid roughly $2.7 billion to license Character.AI’s technology and bring him and his colleagues back to lead Gemini development.
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Since then, he has been credited as a key figure behind Gemini’s ability to close the gap on OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Responding to the departure, Google told Reuters: “We are grateful for Noam’s meaningful contributions to Google over the years.” The timing of his exit from Google was not immediately clear.
The move comes amid heightened competition among leading AI firms to secure top talent, and as OpenAI prepares for a potential initial public offering later this year. The timing of Shazeer’s departure from Google was not immediately clear.
OpenAI has not yet detailed his responsibilities at the organisation.
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