Noam Shazeer, a co-author of the transformer paper, said in June 2026 that he will leave Google for OpenAI. The co-lead of Google Gemini and a vice president of engineering will research next-generation model architectures at OpenAI. ASAP summarizes the move from the primary source.

Who he is: the person who built the transformer

Noam Shazeer is a co-author of the 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need." That paper introduced the transformer architecture that underpins almost every large language model today. He is one of the core researchers who built the foundation of modern LLMs.

His role at OpenAI: Lead for Architecture Research

Shazeer is the Lead for Architecture Research at OpenAI, a role that explores next-generation AI model architectures. The person who built the transformer will research what comes after it.

The person Google paid about 2.7 billion dollars to bring back in 2024

Shazeer is a Google veteran who joined in 2000 and later left to co-found Character.AI. Google paid about 2.7 billion dollars in 2024 to bring him and his team back. The person who returned under that deal is moving to OpenAI roughly two years later.

What it means: the AI talent race intensifies

The OpenAI move is proof of how fierce the talent competition among frontier labs has become. The destination of a transformer-author-level figure can shape a company's research direction. It confirms again that the model race is a talent race.

Wrap-up

Transformer co-author Noam Shazeer leaves Google for OpenAI as Lead for Architecture Research. The core points are the weight of an "Attention Is All You Need" author, research into next-generation architectures, and the 2024 deal in which Google paid about 2.7 billion dollars to bring him back. Talent sits at the center of the AI race.

Source: ASAP summary of Noam Shazeer's move to OpenAI (June 2026; from Google Gemini co-lead and vice president of engineering to OpenAI Lead for Architecture Research, co-author of the 2017 transformer paper, joined Google in 2000 then co-founded Character.AI, brought back by Google in 2024 for about 2.7 billion dollars).