The latest:
John Jumper, the Google DeepMind vice president who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for co-developing AlphaFold, announced he is joining Anthropic — the latest high-profile departure to hit Google’s AI operation.
Details:
- Jumper co-developed AlphaFold, the AI system that cracked the protein folding problem and accelerated drug discovery, earning him the Nobel alongside DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.
- “After nearly 9 years, I have decided to leave GDM and join Anthropic,” Jumper wrote on X, crediting Hassabis with giving him the chance to lead the AlphaFold team just six months after finishing his PhD.
- Jumper’s exit came at the same time as Noam Shazeer’s departure to OpenAI. The twin losses sent Alphabet stock down around 6% in one session, wiping over $245 billion from its market value, according to Motley Fool.
- SignalFire’s 2025 State of Talent Report found engineers at OpenAI were eight times more likely to move to Anthropic than the reverse. For Google DeepMind, the ratio was nearly 11-to-1 in Anthropic’s favor.
What to watch:
The real test is what Jumper builds at Anthropic. If he applies his strengths in applied AI to science and medicine, the move could give Anthropic an edge that goes well beyond the competition over language models.
