Nobel Prize winner Jumper and two others join Anthropic

John Jumper, co-winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, the protein folding AI model that cracked a 50 year old problem in biology, has left Google DeepMind for Anthropic. Joining him are two others recently departed from Google: Jonas Adler, an expert in using AI for scientific computation, and Alexander Pritzel, who focused on training AI models. Together, these three are seen as key members of Google’s AI team.

This follows an ongoing trend that has only picked up pace in 2026. Just last week, Noam Shazeer, co-author of the ‘Attention Is All You Need’ paper which popularized the transformer architecture and co-lead of Google’s Gemini project said he would be leaving Google for OpenAI. Google isn’t just losing fringe researchers, but rather, it’s losing the folks who built the very products it competes against.

1The numbers tell the story

According to a recent SignalFire report, DeepMind engineers are leaving for Anthropic at a rate 11x higher than vice versa. This isn’t just random variance or personal preference; it indicates that there is something fundamentally different between these two organizations that the former finds preferable to the latter.

Equity seems to be the main factor here. As both Anthropic and OpenAI prepare for IPOs, their stock options are much more valuable than what Google currently provides. After spending years working on cutting edge technologies that are transforming society, why wouldn’t someone want to take a chance on a younger company with potentially huge returns?

2What this means for the models you'll use

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis responded with a fair point: Google has the largest AI research team in the world, spanning across many fields. We have plenty of talent. Losing one person or even several won’t cripple our thousands strong organization. Furthermore, talent moves both ways in competitive markets; we hire from rival companies too.

However, there is some truth behind all the noise. If the man who received a Nobel Prize for AI’s greatest scientific breakthrough believes that his future lies at Anthropic, then that’s a thoughtful decision on where he thinks impactful, foundational research will occur going forward. Similarly, if the co-author of the Transformer paper goes to OpenAI, then that’s a strategic move towards where he sees the most important work being done. These individuals aren’t looking for stability, but rather, they’re placing bets on where they think the biggest impact can be made. As someone interested in the field of AI, it’ll be interesting to follow where these folks end up.