Search engine outfit, Alphabet shares slipped again as more Google AI boffins reportedly legged it for rival labs chasing bigger glory.
The Wall Street Journal reported that shares in the Google owner fell 1.3 per cent to $340.82 in premarket trading, despite a broader rally across tech. That deepened the selloff triggered by last week’s AI departures.
The stock was set to open 7.4 per cent lower than its close on Thursday before the Juneteenth holiday. Apparently, investors dislike seeing the brains behind the machine walk out with their notebooks.
Bloomberg reported that Google Gemini researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel plan to leave for Anthropic. Gemini is Google’s answer to Anthropic’s Claude range.
The latest reported exits extend a talent leak from Google’s AI team, where the “everything is fine” siren is now sounding a bit wheezy.
Alphabet stock fell five per cent on Monday, its biggest one-day decline in more than a year. That came after AI heavyweights John Jumper and Noam Shazeer said they were leaving.
Jumper is heading to Anthropic, while Shazeer is leaving for OpenAI.
Speaking at Cannes earlier this week, Google AI lab DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis said Google was holding its own in the talent scrap between AI labs.
“We have by far the biggest and broadest research bench of any of the labs out there,” Hassabis said.
The Journal said that several junior researchers and engineers have left Google in recent days. The exodus suggests AI talent is now moving faster than the corporate decks explaining why none of it matters.
