Google Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer says he will leave to join IPO-bound OpenAI

Noam Shazeer, Google’s vice president of engineering and co-lead of its Gemini AI models, said he will leave the company to join IPO-bound OpenAI. The move comes as leading AI firms compete aggressively for talent while racing to build more advanced models. Shazeer’s exit follows reports that Google paid $2.7 billion less than two years ago to bring him back from startup Character.AI along with a team of researchers.