Google Loses 5 AI Researchers in One Week

Five top Google AI researchers departed in seven days, rattling investors and sending Alphabet shares down over 5% to $345.29. Notable exits include Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer heading to OpenAI and Nobel laureate John Jumper moving to Anthropic, with both rivals having filed confidential IPO paperwork that makes their equity grants more attractive. Despite strong Q1 results — $109.9 billion in revenue and 63% Cloud growth — markets are uneasy as Google's $175-185 billion capex plan coincides with a delayed Gemini 3.5 Pro release and a widening product gap in AI coding assistants. Polymarket gives Anthropic a 98.2% chance of leading Chatbot Arena by June 30, versus just 0.3% for Google.