Nobel laureate John Jumper leaves DeepMind for Anthropic

John Jumper, who shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry, announced on Friday that he is leaving Google DeepMind to join competitor Anthropic. The move marks the end of Jumper’s tenure of nearly 9 years at the Google-owned AI research laboratory. During his time at the organization, Jumper worked on AlphaFold, an AI model designed to predict the 3D structure of proteins based on their genetic sequences. Jumper and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2024 for their work on the system.

In a post on X, Jumper reflected on his career at the laboratory, noting that Hassabis “took a real chance letting me lead the AlphaFold team just six months after finishing my PhD, and the entire GDM team taught me so much about how to do great science.” Jumper also expressed his ongoing appreciation for the organization, stating that Google DeepMind is a special place and that he remains excited to hear about the discoveries the team makes next. Beyond his scientific research, Bloomberg reported that Jumper was a key member of Google’s team developing coding tools, a product category that the company has struggled to sell to businesses.

Jumper’s departure to Anthropic is part of a broader pattern of talent reallocation among AI development labs. His announcement follows news this week that Character AI co-founder Noam Shazeer is also leaving Google DeepMind. Shazeer, however, is departing the organization to join rival lab OpenAI.

Why it matters

Jumper’s departure is a notable loss for Google’s AI efforts, particularly in coding tools, highlighting the intense competition for top-tier research talent among major AI labs.