{"id":541084,"date":"2026-06-18T05:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/541084\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T05:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:47:09","slug":"a-google-veteran-who-founded-character-ai-is-jumping-to-openai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/541084\/","title":{"rendered":"A Google Veteran Who Founded Character.AI Is Jumping to OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noam Shazeer, a co-lead at Gemini and the founder of Character.AI is leaving Google to join OpenAI<\/a> in the latest AI talent war move.<\/p>\n

In an X post on Wednesday, Shazeer announced his departure and said he looks forward to working with the “exceptional team” at the ChatGPT maker.<\/p>\n

“It was a difficult decision to move on. I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together,” Shazeer wrote. “It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you.”<\/p>\n

In a Wednesday X post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Shazeer “is one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of openai.”<\/p>\n

\n

noam is one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of openai.<\/p>\n

only took 10 years.<\/p>\n

i think it will be worth the wait! https:\/\/t.co\/Hj2fjCywjv<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Sam Altman (@sama) June 18, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Gemini co-lead joined Google in 2000 and stayed with the company, aside from a three-year period when he left to cofound the chatbot-building startup Character.AI<\/a>. In 2024, the search giant rehired the founders and paid for non-exclusive rights to use the startup’s technology. Character.AI remains a separate legal entity.<\/p>\n

In 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google paid Character.AI $2.7 billion for a special deal that gave Google access to the startup’s technology, and an agreement that Shazeer would have to work for Google again.<\/p>\n

Shazeer was a key part of Google’s early AI development efforts. A 2017 paper he coauthored is largely seen as the kickstarter to present-day large language models.<\/p>\n

Shazeer’s move to the IPO-bound company is the latest in a series of top-talent reshuffles at AI heavyweights. Labs, including OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic, are offering top researchers and engineers\u00a0enormous pay packages<\/a>\u00a0and devising complex acqui-hire deals to incentivize them to make the jump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Noam Shazeer, a co-lead at Gemini and the founder of Character.AI is leaving Google to join OpenAI in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,8774,232226,2006,18,33194,823,232228,19,17,232229,52962,307,232225,934,82,232227,8739],"class_list":["post-541084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-character","tag-co-lead","tag-company","tag-eire","tag-founder","tag-google","tag-google-veteran","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-key-part","tag-noam-shazeer","tag-openai","tag-shazeer","tag-startup","tag-technology","tag-very-beginning","tag-x-post"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116769537860406489","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}