Nobel Laureate John Jumper Leaves Google DeepMind for Anthropic
TL;DR
- John Jumper, who led AlphaFold2 and won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is leaving Google DeepMind for Anthropic after nearly nine years.
- Jumper's departure follows Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer's move to OpenAI by one day, two major Google exits in 48 hours.
- Anthropic acquired Coefficient Bio, a stealth biotech startup with mostly former Genentech researchers, for $400 million in April.
Nobel laureate John Jumper, vice president at Google DeepMind and the researcher who led AlphaFold2, announced Thursday he is leaving after nearly nine years to join Anthropic. AlphaFold2 predicts three-dimensional protein structures and earned Jumper a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside Demis Hassabis of DeepMind; the other half went to University of Washington professor David Baker. Born in 1985, Jumper became the youngest chemistry Nobel laureate in over 70 years.
The announcement, which The Next Web reported Jumper made on X, arrived one day after Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer announced he was leaving Google for OpenAI. Shazeer co-authored the foundational 2017 "Attention Is All You Need" paper underlying modern large language models, and Google reportedly spent $2.7 billion to bring him back from Character.AI less than two years ago. Two significant departures in 48 hours is a notable sequence, and in AI, where individual researchers can determine a company's technical trajectory, the pattern draws attention.
For Anthropic, the hire fits a visible strategic direction. In April the company acquired Coefficient Bio for $400 million, a stealth biotech startup with fewer than 10 employees, mostly former Genentech researchers. A researcher of Jumper's background, whose career has been built on applying AI to structural biology, would slot naturally into that ambition.
The honest caveat is that neither Anthropic nor DeepMind disclosed Jumper's specific role, and what the reporting doesn't give you is whether he'll be doing scientific AI research, contributing to foundational model work, or something else. Jumper said he plans to take time to recharge before starting, so the shape of his contribution is still to come.
Anthropicappears to be assembling the people and companies needed for a serious push into life sciences, not just a biology-flavored chatbot. Whether that translates into tools that drug discovery teams and structural biologists actually depend on, or stays at the level of strategic positioning, is worth watching over the next few years.
Originally reported by The Next Web
Read the original article →Original headline: Nobel Laureate John Jumper Leaves Google DeepMind for Anthropic — AlphaFold Creator's Exit Follows Noam Shazeer's Move to OpenAI by One Day