Google has re-hired its former researcher, Noam Shazeer, to co-lead its AI models in a $2.7 billion deal, according to the Wall Street Journal. Shazeer had worked at Google for 21 years before leaving in 2021. He reportedly quit after Google refused to launch a chatbot he built with a colleague.
After leaving Google, Shazeer became the head of Character.AI, a company that raised $193 million and was valued at $1 billion last year. Character.AI uses the technical advancements from a 2017 research paper Shazeer co-authored, which played a key role in the current AI boom.
The report says Google paid $2.7 billion to Character.AI for a technology transfer and to bring Shazeer back. Google had been in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Character.AI but decided to rehire him instead. Shazeer now serves as a technical lead on Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, alongside Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals.
Gemini is a line of AI models being developed by Google’s DeepMind division and is being integrated into Google products like Search and Pixel smartphones. The AI boom has led to fierce competition, with companies like OpenAI, Google, and Amazon-backed Anthropic racing to release new chatbot features.
2.7 billion