Google DeepMind's Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold researcher John Jumper has left for Anthropic, marking the latest departure of a top AI scientist from Google amid competition from rival labs.

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.