Did Google’s AI Ambitions Take A Hit Twice In A Week? What Investors Need To Know

Google lost DeepMind Vice President John Jumper, and Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer to AI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI, respectively.

• Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in artificial intelligence, alongside Demis Hassabis, the current CEO of DeepMind.
• Shazeer is best known as a co-author of the 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which introduced the Transformer architecture that underpins modern AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
• Shazeer will oversee AI architecture research at OpenAI, helping advance the company's model development as it prepares for a listing later this year alongside rival Anthropic.

Shares of Alphabet Inc. (GOOG, GOOGL) tumbled in Monday morning’s trade after the company’s AI ambitions experienced a setback twice in the span of a week.

Google DeepMind Vice President John Jumper announced on X over the weekend that he is leaving the company to join Anthropic.

“A bit of news: After nearly 9 years, I have decided to leave Google DeepMind and join Anthropic (after taking some time to recharge). I am incredibly grateful for my time at GDM,” he said in a post on X.

Alphabet’s Class A shares were down 6% in Monday’s midday trade. GOOGL was among the top trending tickers on Stocktwits at the time of writing.

Second Major AI Talent Loss For GOOGL In A Week

Jumper’s departure from Google comes merely a day after Noam Shazeer, former co-lead of Gemini, said he was leaving the company for OpenAI.

“It was a difficult decision to move on. I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together.  It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you,” Shazeer said in a post on X.

Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in artificial intelligence, alongside Demis Hassabis, the current CEO of DeepMind.

Shazeer is best known as a co-author of the 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which introduced the Transformer architecture that underpins modern AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

Shazeer will oversee AI architecture research at OpenAI, helping advance the company's model development as it prepares for a listing later this year alongside rival Anthropic.

GOOGL Leaders Concerned About Falling Behind In AI Race

According to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, leaders at Google and DeepMind are concerned that the company could fall behind in the AI race.

People cited in the report said Google has yet to offer businesses a cohesive AI coding platform, with Gemini's coding capabilities spread across multiple products under different brands.

They said competing internal efforts and a lack of focus have hampered the company's ability to capitalize on growing demand for AI coding tools, according to the report.

What Retail Investors Think Of GOOGL Stock

Retail sentiment on Stocktwits around Alphabet trended in the ‘bullish’ territory, with message volumes at ‘high’ levels at the time of writing.

GOOGL stock is up 11% year-to-date and 108% over the past 12 months. The S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is up 25% over the past 12 months, while the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (QQQ) is up 40%.

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