According to insiders, two top artificial intelligence researchers at U.S. tech giant Google (GOOGL) are planning to leave the company and join competitor Anthropic PBC. Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, both regarded internally at Google as key contributors to the Gemini AI large model ecosystem platform, will move to the developer of Claude. The insiders requested anonymity because the information has not yet been made public.
This is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from Google in recent days. Previously, Nobel laureate John Jumper had already moved to Anthropic, and star researcher Noam Shazeer moved to OpenAI. These departures have shocked long-term Google investors and have again raised external questions about Google’s actual competitiveness in the race for AI large models and agentic products. By the close of U.S. stock trading on Wednesday, Google parent company Alphabet’s share price edged lower, falling as much as 1.2% during the session.
This round of senior AI developer movements suggests, to some extent, that Google’s AI roadmap is encountering some resistance, but it does not equate to a complete failure of Google’s AI strategy, nor does it signify a slowdown in the global AI monetization process. Anthropic’s talent attraction highlights that capital markets are rewarding AI-native companies that are more focused, carry less historical baggage, and can more easily embed AI large models into enterprise workflows.
These latest departures also underscore that Google is facing pressure from two soon-to-be-public startups. These companies offer employees at large technology firms the opportunity to join before an IPO and thereby reap substantial returns. According to reports, in at least one case, a Google employee’s departure followed a change in priorities regarding the allocation of valuable computing resources. Two insiders revealed that shortly before Shazeer announced his plan to join OpenAI, the AI infrastructure computing resources originally allocated to an important project of his were reassigned to Google DeepMind’s team in London, in order to strengthen team collaboration and streamline budget processes.
A Google spokesperson stated that the company is confident in its position in the AI talent market, citing remarks made earlier this week by Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. Speaking at an event in Cannes, Hassabis said that there is substantial talent flow among all leading AI labs, that Google has won its fair share of top talent, and that it currently possesses the largest and broadest research talent pool of any lab, while acknowledging that this is currently the most competitive market in the tech industry.
Anthropic, which both competes with and partners with Google, has been actively poaching talent. From a commercialization perspective, Alphabet’s first-quarter data show that Google Search and other advertising revenue grew 19%, Google Cloud revenue grew 63% and exceeded $20 billion for the first time, backlog orders nearly doubled quarter-over-quarter to over $460 billion, and Gemini Enterprise paid monthly active users grew 40% quarter-over-quarter. These figures indicate that Google’s AI monetization is still advancing. The real issue is that Google must make more difficult resource allocation decisions in balancing its search advertising cash cow, advancing Gemini model capabilities, allocating scarce computing power, retaining top talent, and accelerating enterprise-side deployment.
