Google has brought back Noam Shazeer, the former head of startup Character.AI and a veteran Google researcher, to co-lead its primary AI initiative.
Shazeer will now serve as a technical lead on Gemini, working alongside Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals, according to a company memo shared with employees.
Gemini, an advanced line of AI models under development by DeepMind, Google’s AI division, is being integrated into products like Search and Pixel smartphones.
Shazeer’s return to Google follows the tech giant’s acquisition of key talent from Character.AI, a chatbot company he founded in 2021. Google reportedly paid billions to bring Shazeer and a select group of his employees back to the company, along with securing a licensing agreement with Character.AI.
“We are thrilled to join the best team on earth building the most valuable technology on earth,” Shazeer wrote in response to the memo, which was obtained by Reuters.
This internal announcement was initially reported by The Information.
Shazeer first joined Google in 2000, just two years after the company was founded. He is also one of the co-authors of a groundbreaking 2017 research paper that played a pivotal role in sparking the current AI surge.
Character.AI, which leverages the innovations from that paper, has raised $193 million and was valued at $1 billion by venture capitalists last year.
In November, Reuters reported that Google was considering a significant investment in Character.AI. Instead, the company opted to bring Shazeer back in-house.
This move mirrors similar strategies by Amazon and Microsoft, who have also recruited top talent from AI startups as they navigate increasing regulatory scrutiny.
Although these deals aren’t outright acquisitions, they are under examination by the Federal Trade Commission.
This month, a U.S. judge ruled that Google’s search engine violated antitrust laws, spending billions of dollars to maintain an illegal monopoly.
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