Transformer Co-Author Noam Shazeer Leaves Google to Join OpenAI

Noam Shazeer, a co-author of the Transformer architecture and a co-lead of Google's Gemini, announced on June 18, 2026 that he is leaving Google to join OpenAI. In his own message, Shazeer said he was "excited to share that I'll be joining OpenAI" and looking forward to working with the team, calling it "a difficult decision to move on" while expressing pride in what he and Google's team had built. The exact reason and timing of his departure, as well as an official Google comment, have not been disclosed; Reuters broke the news, followed by outlets including CNBC.