Alphabet is losing another top AI researcher, and this time the market is reacting even more strongly. Shares dropped 6.2% on Monday, marking the biggest single-day decline in over a year. The selloff came after John Jumper announced on Friday that he is leaving Google DeepMind for Anthropic, after about nine years at the company. His exit comes just after Noam Shazeer left for OpenAI last week, which raises concerns about Google’s ability to keep leading AI talent during a crucial time in the tech race. Here’s a look at who Jumper is and what his departure could mean.
Jumper is best known for co-creating AlphaFold, DeepMind’s AI system that predicts protein structures from amino acid sequences. This achievement earned him a Nobel Prize and is seen as one of the most important uses of AI in science. His leaving DeepMind, which leads Google’s advanced AI work, is a real loss for the company’s research strength.
Google DeepMind confirmed Jumper’s departure in a statement, calling his work important for science and AI and wishing him the best. Jumper shared news of his move on X on Friday.
The quick departures of Shazeer and Jumper show how fierce the competition for AI talent has become. Big tech firms like Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft are going head-to-head with AI-focused companies like Anthropic and OpenAI for a small group of top researchers. Pay offers now reach hundreds of millions of dollars, and buying startups to get talent is now common.
Competition is heating up even more as both Anthropic and OpenAI plan to go public this year. Now, the race is not just about talent and the best AI models, but also about attracting investor money to support the next stage of AI growth. Alphabet shares are down about 9% this month but are still up 10% for the year.
