Google DeepMind’s two top scientists leave, shares plunge 7%. Demis Hassabis hits back: We’ll poach the talent we need

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis 6/23 at the Cannes Lions Festival gave an exclusive interview to Semafor, directly addressing concerns about talent loss, stating that Google has the largest research team in the industry and can still secure a position in this "fiercely competitive" job market. The week prior, Transformer co-author Noam Shazeer and Nobel Chemistry laureate John Jumper left one after the other, causing Alphabet's stock to plummet 7% in a single day, erasing about $250 billion in market value.
(Background: Google is losing top talent! Nobel laureate John Jumper leaves DeepMind for Anthropic)
(Additional context: Google Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer resigns to join OpenAI)

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• Demis Hassabis’s strength comes from the TPU computing moat
• Two star researchers leaving within a week
• The real talent war is on campus

Key Highlights

• Noam Shazeer (Transformer co-author) joined OpenAI on June 18; John Jumper (2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, AlphaFold) joined Anthropic on June 19, both leaving within a week.
• Alphabet’s stock price dropped as much as 7% on Monday (6/22), the worst trading day in over a year, with about $250 billion in market value wiped out.
• Demis Hassabis stated at Cannes: Google possesses the industry’s largest research team, and its custom TPU computing cluster is an irreplaceable asset in attracting top researchers.

The departure of two heavyweight researchers within a week has shaken the market, which has effectively cast a vote of no confidence worth $250 billion in market value. On June 18, Noam Shazeer, co-author of the foundational paper "Attention Is All You Need" for modern generative AI large models, announced he was joining OpenAI.

Just one day later, John Jumper, who had been at DeepMind for nine years and co-developed AlphaFold (a groundbreaking AI tool for predicting protein structures, and a joint recipient of the 2024 Nobel Chemistry Prize with Demis Hassabis), announced he was moving to Anthropic.

On Monday, Alphabet’s stock price once again plunged 7%, marking the worst trading day in over a year.

Demis Hassabis’s strength comes from the TPU computing moat

In response to external doubts, Demis Hassabis did not back down at Cannes. He directly stated that the current job market in tech is the most "ferociously competitive" in history, with significant talent movement among top labs, which is normal and not unique to Google.

He emphasized that Google’s structural advantages—its vast data ecosystem, integrated hardware and computing power, especially its proprietary TPU (Tensor Processing Unit, a chip designed specifically for AI training) clusters—are fundamental infrastructure that nearly all cutting-edge large model researchers rely on.

We have the largest and most deeply stocked research team among all labs. We earn the top talent we deserve.

In 2023, Google Brain and DeepMind officially merged, consolidating AI R&D resources previously split between the two units under Demis Hassabis, focusing fully on the Gemini model and fundamental scientific research. Whether this organizational integration can deliver synergies remains to be seen over the next few model generations.

Two star researchers leaving within a week

Before leaving, Noam Shazeer was Vice President of Engineering at Google and co-lead of the Gemini model, one of the few individuals with both top academic achievements and deep involvement in product deployment. John Jumper, who redefined biotech AI with AlphaFold, was awarded the Nobel and his departure carries symbolic weight. Notably, both are heading to Google’s main competitors—OpenAI and Anthropic—almost as a direct challenge to Google.

Many media outlets see this as more of a "PR crisis" than an operational one for Google. The company’s research team is deep enough that losing two key figures alone is unlikely to derail the Gemini project. However, from an investor perspective, high-profile departures are a bearish signal.

The real talent war is on campus

Semafor highlights a key insight: breakthroughs in next-generation AI algorithms are more likely to come from top PhD students fresh out of university than from already established senior executives. Major labs are competing fiercely to be the first to recruit promising young scholars from leading university AI labs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where did Noam Shazeer and John Jumper go?

Noam Shazeer announced on June 18, 2026, that he joined OpenAI. He is a co-author of the 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need," which laid the foundation for modern large models, and was co-lead of Google Gemini before leaving. John Jumper announced on June 19 that he joined Anthropic. He spent nine years at DeepMind, developing AlphaFold, and jointly received the 2024 Nobel Chemistry Prize with Demis Hassabis.

Why did Google’s stock drop 7% just because two people left?

On June 22 (Monday), Alphabet’s stock once again fell as much as 7%, the worst single-day decline in over a year, with about $250 billion in market value evaporated. The market’s reaction was not just about the individual contributions of the two, but interpreted their departures as a potential systemic issue in Google’s talent attraction, amplifying sell-off sentiment.