John Jumper, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist behind Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold system, is leaving the company to join AI startup Anthropic, Bloomberg reported. Jumper said on social media that he is ending nearly nine years at DeepMind and thanked CEO Demis Hassabis.[1][2]
Jumper is one of the world’s best-known researchers in AI and biology. He helped develop AlphaFold, the AI model that predicts protein structures, and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry for that work.[1][2]
His departure is another setback for Google, coming just a week after reports that Noam Shazeer, a co-author of a foundational paper on generative AI and a Gemini developer, would leave for OpenAI. Anthropic and OpenAI have rapidly grown around their Claude and ChatGPT products, respectively.[1]
Bloomberg also reported that some DeepMind employees have been concerned in recent months that the company lacks a clear answer to demand for AI coding tools. The latest exits underscore how the competition for top AI talent is shifting toward rival companies.
