Alphabet stock slides as Google loses two top AI researchers
Key takeaways
- Noam Shazeer, who held the title of vice president of engineering and shared leadership of the Gemini AI models, set off the wave of departures when he announced last week that OpenAI would be his next destination.
- The second blow landed Friday, when John Jumper disclosed he was departing Google DeepMind for Anthropic, ending a nine-year tenure at the company.
- "We are grateful for John s significant contributions to Google DeepMind s work in advancing science and AI," Alphabet said in a statement to Barron s.
Alphabet stock slides as Google loses two top AI researchers Quartz · Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images Cris Tolomia Mon, June 22, 2026 at 11:44 PM GMT+7 2 min read GOOG Two prominent AI researchers jumping ship to competitors within days of each other sent Alphabet shares tumbling as much as 7% on Monday — a drop that, if it holds, would mark the steepest single-session loss for the stock in over a year.
Noam Shazeer, who held the title of vice president of engineering and shared leadership of the Gemini AI models, set off the wave of departures when he announced last week that OpenAI would be his next destination. His return to Google had come less than two years earlier: in August 2024, a partnership deal with Character.AI — the startup Shazeer and fellow researcher Daniel De Freitas had co-founded after departing Google in 2021 — brought both men back into the fold, according to CNBC.
The second blow landed Friday, when John Jumper disclosed he was departing Google DeepMind for Anthropic, ending a nine-year tenure at the company. A 2024 Nobel Prize recipient alongside DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis, Jumper built his reputation largely on AlphaFold — a DeepMind AI tool whose predictions of more than 200 million protein structures have dramatically accelerated biological and medical research. Alphabet confirmed his departure.