Noam Shazeer, Vice President of Engineering and Gemini co-lead at Google DeepMind, announced Wednesday he is leaving to join OpenAI. The move highlights the intensifying competition for top artificial intelligence talent among major technology companies. Shazeer is a prominent figure in the AI sector, known for co-authoring the landmark 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need," which laid the foundation for modern large language models.

Sharing the news on X, Shazeer wrote, "I'm excited to share that I'll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there." He described the decision to move on as difficult and expressed pride in his work at Google. Shazeer's career spans over two decades at Google, a stint as CEO of Character.AI, and a return to lead Gemini development.

Responding to the announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called Shazeer "one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of OpenAI," adding that the partnership was "only 10 years" in the making. The hiring follows Liz Wamai joining OpenAI as head of recruiting after more than three years at Netflix Inc., as the company aims to nearly double its workforce to 8,000 from 4,500 by year-end.

Career Trajectory

Shazeer co-founded Character.AI after leaving Google in 2021. The startup later signed a licensing deal with Alphabet Inc. in August 2024. Under that agreement, Shazeer and co-founder Daniel De Freitas rejoined Google DeepMind, where he rose to VP of Engineering and Gemini co-lead.

Key Career Milestones

Shazeer's departure comes just weeks after Alphabet introduced new AI products, including the Gemini 3.5 Flash model and the Gemini Spark AI agent, at its annual I/O developer conference.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are organizing separate banking teams to work on potential stock market debuts by OpenAI and Anthropic. The move aims to prevent sensitive information from crossing between the two direct competitors. The two banks reportedly expect to be involved with both transactions while keeping the coverage groups walled off from one another.

The setup departs from typical IPO playbooks, in which a lead bank usually avoids representing two rivals going to market simultaneously. The banks are assigning different bankers to each mandate, even as both offerings are expected to include broad syndicates with multiple firms.

Historical Context

During the 2019 IPOs of Lyft and Uber, the work was divided among different lead underwriters rather than shared by the same top banks. JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, and Jefferies led Lyft's deal, while Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America handled Uber's IPO.

IPO Timeline and Challenges

Both OpenAI and Anthropic submitted confidential IPO filings earlier in June, which can keep documents out of public view while companies gauge timing. Neither company has set a definitive timeline for its IPO debut. The earliest scenario discussed was August, though expectations have shifted toward a period after early September.

OpenAI has suggested a public offering may not be imminent because it wants to complete certain priorities while staying private. "We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it's a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best," a statement read.

Meanwhile, Anthropic is contending with policy and regulatory complications, including U.S. government limits on foreign access to newer models and an unresolved disagreement tied to a Pentagon designation.