Alphabet stock slides as Google loses two top AI researchers

Cris Tolomia

Mon, June 22, 2026 astatine 11:44 AM CDT 2 min read

Two salient AI researchers jumping vessel to competitors wrong days of each different sent Alphabet shares tumbling arsenic overmuch arsenic 7% connected Monday — a driblet that, if it holds, would people the steepest single-session nonaccomplishment for the banal successful implicit a year.

Noam Shazeer, who held the rubric of vice president of engineering and shared enactment of the Gemini AI models, acceptable disconnected the question of departures erstwhile helium announced past week that OpenAI would beryllium his adjacent destination. His instrumentality to Google had travel little than 2 years earlier: successful August 2024, a concern woody with Character.AI — the startup Shazeer and chap researcher Daniel De Freitas had co-founded aft departing Google successful 2021 — brought some men backmost into the fold, according to CNBC.

The 2nd stroke landed Friday, erstwhile John Jumper disclosed helium was departing Google DeepMind for Anthropic, ending a nine-year tenure astatine the company. A 2024 Nobel Prize recipient alongside DeepMind main Demis Hassabis, Jumper built his estimation mostly connected AlphaFold — a DeepMind AI instrumentality whose predictions of much than 200 cardinal macromolecule structures person dramatically accelerated biologic and aesculapian research. Alphabet confirmed his departure.

"We are grateful for John's important contributions to Google DeepMind's enactment successful advancing subject and AI," Alphabet said successful a connection to Barron's. "We privation him good successful his adjacent chapter."

Anthropic confirmed that Jumper volition articulation the company.

"Losing John is simply a large nonaccomplishment for Google and determination is nary mode to sugarcoat it," Wedbush Securities expert Dan Ives said.

D.A. Davidson expert Gil Luria said the back-to-back exits were raising questions astir Google's lasting successful the contention for apical AI talent. "The departures of Noam Shazeer to OpenAI and John Jumper to Anthropic wrong a mates of days are raising the interest that Google is losing the warfare for endowment astatine the frontier of AI," Luria said.

Adding to Monday's selling unit was a Wall Street Journal interrogation Satya Nadella gave Sunday successful which the Microsoft main argued that reliance connected ascendant AI providers should shrink and characterized the AI marketplace arsenic progressively commoditized. Alphabet has raised $141 cardinal successful indebtedness and equity since October arsenic it works to physique retired its AI infrastructure.

As of Monday's session, Alphabet shares were trading astir $346.30, a nonaccomplishment of astir 5.9%. The banal has shed astir 9% implicit the people of June, though it inactive carries a summation of astir 11% connected a year-to-date basis.