• by Laurie Sullivan , 10 hours ago

Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) professionals continues to surge, with some experts referred to as transformative and demand for talent rising by 245%. AI has become the top skill sought by recruiters worldwide, ahead of long-established skills such as communication or leadership.

Noam Shazeer, Google vice president of engineering and Gemini co-lead at Google DeepMind, will leave the company to join OpenAI, the AI company told staff on Wednesday. 

Shazeer confirmed the move on his X account. "I'm excited to share that I'll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there," Shazeer, who is considered a legendary engineer, wrote in a post on X. "It was a difficult decision to move on. I'm incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we've built together."

The move marks an aggressive acceleration of OpenAI's support for AI. Shazeer co-invented the Transformer architecture and pioneered the foundational architecture used to scale massive AI systems, whichsuggests his role as OpenAI lead for AI architecture research will have massive, downstream implications for brands and marketers.

Shazeer also co-founded and served as CEO of Character.AI before returning to Google's AI initiative in 2024, following a $2.7 billion licensing acquisition of his startup.

“When Noam and Daniel started Character.AI, our goal of personalized superintelligence required a full stack approach," Character AI wrote in a blog post that is no longer accessible, when announcing the move, adding: "We had to pre-train models, post-train them to power the experiences that make Character.AI special, and build a product platform with the ability to reach users globally."

At OpenAI, Shazeer will serve as lead for architecture research, focusing on the company's core structural blueprints to power future generations of AI. And, he will look for architecture for AI models, OpenAI told employees, as reported by The information.

Shazeer joined Google for the first time in 2000. He co-authored a 2017 research paper credited with helping to develop modern large language models (LLM).

When Google decided not to develop the chatbot concept that Shazeer and De Freitas had pushed internally, the two researchers departed and went on to build Character.AI, according to CNBC.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X welcomed Shazeer to the company, writing that he "is one of the people I have most wanted to work with since the very beginning of openai." It "only took 10 years," he added.

In response, Google wrote: "We are grateful for Noam's meaningful contributions to Google over the years."

OpenAI research scientist Noam Brown offered a tongue-and-cheek type of welcome. He wrote on X, "I'm always thrilled to have more Noams at OpenAI, but I'm especially thrilled to welcome Noam Shazeer."