Nobel laureate Jumper leaves Google DeepMind for Anthropic

What happened

John Jumper, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing AlphaFold and led that team at Google DeepMind for nearly nine years, has joined Anthropic. This follows the recent departure of Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer to OpenAI, and earlier exits including David Silver, a lead researcher behind AlphaGo and AlphaZero, who left to start his own startup.

Why it matters

Google DeepMind is losing key figures in AI research to direct competitors Anthropic and OpenAI at a critical time. Jumper's departure signals that even Nobel laureates and foundational AI researchers see opportunity or better terms elsewhere, weakening DeepMind's roster of talent who shaped some of the field's most important breakthroughs.

What to watch

Google is reportedly preparing to launch Gemini 3.5 Pro in late June, but insider rumors suggest it will not be competitive with the latest models from Anthropic and OpenAI—underscoring the stakes of these researcher departures for Google's product roadmap.