John Jumper, a Nobel Prize–winning chemist who led Google DeepMind's AlphaFold breakthrough, is leaving to join Anthropic, continuing a trend of top researchers moving to AI startups.

What happened: John Jumper announced Friday he is leaving Google DeepMind after nearly a decade to join Anthropic. Jumper shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis for his work spearheading AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts a protein's 3D structure from its amino acid sequence.

Why it matters: AlphaFold has become a major breakthrough in medical and biological research, now offering over 200 million protein structure predictions and cutting months or years from the research process. Jumper's departure reflects a broader pattern of technology leaders at Google and Meta moving to AI startups like Anthropic and OpenAI, which are preparing for initial public offerings.

What to watch: Jumper has not disclosed his role at Anthropic and said he will first be taking time to recharge. Hassabis noted that AlphaFold's legacy has shown the field what was possible with AI for science and medicine.