Nobel Prize winner John Jumper is leaving Google DeepMind to join the AI company Anthropic, according to a post he made on his own account (@johnjumpersci) that was highlighted by Techmeme.
Jumper shared the news directly, writing that after nearly nine years he had decided to leave Google DeepMind and join Anthropic, after first taking some time off. He won the Nobel Prize "for protein structure prediction" — the research area most closely associated with DeepMind's work on understanding the shapes of proteins, a problem that has long challenged biologists.
According to The Decoder, Jumper's departure is part of a broader pattern of high-profile exits from Google DeepMind. The Decoder reports that just days before Jumper's announcement, Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer left to join OpenAI, and weeks earlier AlphaGo researcher David Silver started his own company. As The Decoder frames it, three of Google's most prominent AI minds have departed within months.
The sources here are limited to Jumper's own announcement and The Decoder's report on it, so the details of his new role at Anthropic, his start date, and the reasons behind the move are not specified.
Why it matters: the AI field's most accomplished researchers are scarce, and where they choose to work signals which companies are positioned to lead — so a Nobel laureate moving from Google DeepMind to a rival like Anthropic is a notable shift in that talent race.