tech
A Google veteran who founded character.AI is jumping to OpenAI
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.
TL;DR
- Noam Shazeer, co-lead at Gemini and founder of Character.AI, is leaving Google to join OpenAI.
- Shazeer expressed pride in his work at Google and acknowledged it was a difficult decision.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated Shazeer is someone he has long wanted to work with.
- Shazeer first joined Google in 2000, left to cofound Character.AI, and was rehired by Google in 2024 with non-exclusive rights to use Character.AI's technology.
- Google reportedly paid Character.AI $2.7 billion for a special deal.
- Shazeer co-authored a 2017 paper considered a kickstarter for present-day large language models.
- His move is part of a trend of top AI talent moving between companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic.