Google DeepMind vice president John Jumper, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on artificial intelligence (AI), is leaving the company to join Anthropic PBC.
Jumper has been a key member of Google’s AI coding development team and his departure strains the tech giant’s efforts to beat Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX in the race to build the most powerful AI models.
Google has struggled to sell AI coding tools to businesses, according to former employees.
Photo: Reuters
Employees and executives at DeepMind have raised concerns in the past few months that the company does not have a clear solution for businesses seeking AI coding tools, which have become a key focus of Anthropic and OpenAI, and has driven both companies’ momentum.
“After nearly 9 years, I have decided to leave Google DeepMind and join Anthropic,” Jumper posted on social media on Friday.
A spokesperson for Google DeepMind confirmed Jumper’s departure in a statement and said the company was grateful for his contributions to DeepMind’s work in advancing science and AI. An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed Jumper would be joining the company.
Jumper won the chemistry Nobel alongside Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis for creating an AI model that can predict the structure of proteins called AlphaFold.
“Thanks John for an extraordinary partnership and wonderful collaboration over the past 9 years,” Hassabis wrote on social media. “What we achieved with AlphaFold changed the world, and showed the field what was possible with AI for science and medicine, lighting the way for how AI can benefit humanity.”
Technology giants including Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc, along with AI upstarts such as Anthropic and OpenAI, are locked in a fierce talent war, competing for elite researchers as they race to build next-generation AI systems.
“There is so much demand for limited AI research talent that the frontier AI research labs are willing to do whatever it takes to add them. This puts OpenAI and Anthropic at an advantage over large companies such as Google because they can promise less bureaucracy and a more focused effort on pursuing Superintelligence,” DA Davidson & Co analyst Gil Luria said.
Jumper is leaving DeepMind after another of Google’s researchers, Noam Shazeer, left for OpenAI.
Shazeer co-authored a seminal paper that helped catalyze the AI boom.
His departure from Google was a big win for OpenAI as it competes with Anthropic to develop ever-more sophisticated models before their initial public offerings.
Additional reporting by Reuters
