Google AI Exodus: 5 Top Brains Leave in 7 Days

Five top AI researchers have left Google's core team in just seven days. This talent shift has impacted Alphabet's stock, which fell over 5% last week and another 1.14% on Thursday morning. Maggie Germain noted that these exits appear to be a pattern, not a coincidence. She highlighted a gap in Google's product lineup, specifically in coding assistants. Researchers are gravitating towards companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which are building leading AI coding tools. Notable departures include Noam Shazeer, a Gemini co-lead, who is heading to OpenAI, and Nobel laureate John Jumper, who is joining Anthropic. Two more DeepMind researchers are also reportedly moving to Anthropic. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have filed S-1s, making their pre-IPO equity more attractive to researchers. Polymarket traders now give Anthropic a 98.2% probability of having the top model on Chatbot Arena by June 30, while Google is at 0.3%. Compounding the issue, Gemini 3.5 Pro's release was reportedly pushed from June to July. Even with these challenges, Google's underlying business shows strength. Q1 FY26 delivered earnings per share of $5.11 on revenue of $109.90 billion, up 21.8% year over year. Google Cloud grew 63% to over $20 billion, with a backlog exceeding $460 billion. However, investors are nervous about increased capital expenditure, which hit $35.67 billion in Q1, while key talent moves to competitors. This matters because a company's ability to innovate and compete directly impacts its future value.