Noam Shazeer, a coauthor of the 2017 "Attention Is All You Need" paper that introduced the transformer architecture, announced on X that he is leaving Google to join OpenAI, ending a second stint at the company that has now run barely two years. Shazeer wrote, "I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there." Google responded briefly, stating it was "grateful for Noam’s meaningful contributions." There was no detail on timing, his new role at OpenAI, and no comment from OpenAI itself beyond confirming the hire to staff. Shazeer originally joined Google in 2000, left in 2021 to co-found Character.AI, and returned in August 2024 via a roughly $2.7 billion licensing arrangement that brought him into Google DeepMind as VP of engineering and co-lead of the Gemini program. Reporting at the time pegged Shazeer’s own payout from the deal somewhere between $750 million and $1 billion. Public profiles and DeepMind’s own materials still listed Shazeer as Gemini co-lead as recently as early this year.