# DeepMind departures: 4 AI stars leave Google in a week

> Four senior Google DeepMind AI researchers left for Anthropic and OpenAI in a single June 2026 week.

*The brief: four senior Google DeepMind researchers left for Anthropic and OpenAI in a single June 2026 week, led by pre-IPO equity.*

By The FeaturedDaily Desk · FeaturedDaily
Canonical: https://featureddaily.com/news/deepmind-departures-brief

> **Key:** In a single week in June 2026, Google DeepMind lost four senior AI researchers to rivals — Noam Shazeer to OpenAI, and John Jumper, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel to Anthropic. A fifth, Arthur Conmy, said he'd join Anthropic on safety.

## What happened

Shazeer, a co-author of *Attention Is All You Need*, joined **OpenAI** (announced 18 June). Jumper — a DeepMind director and 2024 Nobel chemistry laureate for AlphaFold — went to **Anthropic** (20 June). Bloomberg then reported Adler (AI coding) and Pritzel (pretraining, AlphaFold) were also Anthropic-bound. The pull: pre-IPO equity at Anthropic's recent **$65B raise and ~$965B valuation**, the world's most valuable private AI company.

> Google is poised to lose two more high-profile AI staffers, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, to Anthropic, adding to a week of defections.
> — [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-24/google-poised-to-lose-two-more-high-profile-ai-staffers-to-anthropic), 2026-06-24

## The catch

It wasn't only pay. Reporting cites internal DeepMind tensions — compute for one of Shazeer's projects was reassigned to a London team before he left — plus strategic fit with Anthropic's push into coding, health and science. Jumper's start may slip to 2027 due to non-competes. Alphabet shares fell about **5-6% on 22 June** on AI-spend and retention worries.

## What's next

Google is pushing back on the narrative. DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said in Cannes that talent moves between all leading labs, that Google wins its fair share, and that it retains the biggest, broadest research bench of any lab. Watch whether the exits continue and how they affect Gemini's roadmap.

The wider pattern is what matters. Frontier AI is bottlenecked on a few hundred people who can actually build state-of-the-art models, so each marquee move reshapes the race more than a product launch would. With Anthropic and OpenAI both nearing IPOs and dangling pre-listing equity, Google faces a structural recruiting disadvantage its public stock can't easily fix. Watch whether Google answers with retention packages, restricted-stock refreshes or an internal reorganisation to keep its remaining stars — and whether the poaching war intensifies through the rest of 2026.

## Key takeaways

- Four senior Google DeepMind researchers left in one June 2026 week — three to Anthropic, one to OpenAI.
- Names include Transformer co-author Noam Shazeer (to OpenAI) and Nobel laureate John Jumper (to Anthropic).
- The main pull is pre-IPO equity at Anthropic's ~$965B valuation; Alphabet shares fell about 5-6% on 22 June.

## FAQ

### Who left Google DeepMind in June 2026?
Noam Shazeer (to OpenAI), and John Jumper, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel (to Anthropic); Arthur Conmy said he'd join Anthropic on AI safety.

### Why did they leave?
Chiefly pre-IPO equity at Anthropic's ~$965B valuation, plus internal compute tensions at DeepMind and strategic fit with Anthropic's coding, health and science work.

### Did it affect Alphabet's stock?
Yes — shares fell about 5-6% on 22 June 2026 on AI-spend and talent-retention concerns; Hassabis says Google keeps the broadest research bench.

## Sources

- [AI researchers continue to leave Google for its rivals](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/24/ai-researchers-continue-to-leave-google-for-its-rivals/) — TechCrunch, 2026-06-24
- [Google Poised to Lose Two More High-Profile AI Staffers to Anthropic](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-24/google-poised-to-lose-two-more-high-profile-ai-staffers-to-anthropic) — Bloomberg, 2026-06-24
- [Why Google Just Lost 4 Key Staffers to Anthropic and OpenAI](https://www.inc.com/moses-jeanfrancois/why-google-just-lost-4-key-staffers-to-anthropic-and-openai/91365820) — Inc, 2026-06-24