Noam Shazeer, a co-lead at Gemini and the founder of Character.AI is leaving Google to join OpenAI in the latest AI talent war move.
In an X post on Wednesday, Shazeer announced his departure and said he looks forward to working with the “exceptional team” at the ChatGPT maker.
“It was a difficult decision to move on. I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together,” Shazeer wrote. “It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you.”
In a Wednesday X post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Shazeer “is one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of openai.”
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! https://t.co/Hj2fjCywjv
— Sam Altman (@sama) June 18, 2026
The Gemini co-lead joined Google in 2000 and stayed with the company, aside from a three-year period when he left to cofound the chatbot-building startup Character.AI. In 2024, the search giant rehired the founders and paid for non-exclusive rights to use the startup’s technology. Character.AI remains a separate legal entity.
In 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google paid Character.AI $2.7 billion for a special deal that gave Google access to the startup’s technology, and an agreement that Shazeer would have to work for Google again.
Shazeer was a key part of Google’s early AI development efforts. A 2017 paper he coauthored is largely seen as the kickstarter to present-day large language models.
Shazeer’s move to the IPO-bound company is the latest in a series of top-talent reshuffles at AI heavyweights. Labs, including OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic, are offering top researchers and engineers enormous pay packages and devising complex acqui-hire deals to incentivize them to make the jump.
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