Winni Wintermeyer for The Washington Post via Getty Images
- Several talented AI researchers have recently left Google.
- Anthropic and OpenAI are a big lure for AI talent.
- That lure is partly financial. Noam Shazeer's maneuvering shows what's possible.
If you want to see a person's eyes light up at a Silicon Valley party, just say the words "pre-IPO equity." It works.
Google's sudden AI talent losses may have less to do with dissatisfaction and more to do with a timeless Silicon Valley calculation: where the biggest equity upside lives.
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that two key Gemini researchers, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, are leaving Google for Anthropic, adding to a growing list of high-profile departures from the search giant. The moves follow recent exits by AI luminaries, including Noam Shazeer and Nobel Prize winner John Jumper.
It's tempting to frame these departures as a verdict on Google's AI strategy. That could be part of it — Google has many priorities, while Anthropic and OpenAI are razor-focused on the AI frontier. That's attractive to AI talent.
A simpler explanation may be financial, though.
For elite Silicon Valley talent, moving from a mature public company to a fast-growing startup has long been one of the most reliable paths to outsized wealth creation — especially if the startup is an IPO candidate.
At Google, compensation is mostly tied to RSUs at a company that already commands a market capitalization of over $4 trillion. The upside is substantial but relatively predictable.
At Anthropic or OpenAI, the equation could be very different. Researchers who join now can receive meaningful chunks of pre-IPO equity. If those companies eventually go public — perhaps in late 2026 or 2027 — those grants could appreciate dramatically once lockup periods expire.
Shazeer offers a case study of how lucrative it can be to jump around amid an AI boom.
He left Google in 2021 to cofound Character.AI. About three years later, Google paid roughly $2.7 billion through a licensing deal that brought him back. Because Shazeer owned a sizable stake in the startup, he made hundreds of millions of dollars by selling his stake as part of the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal.
About 20 months later, he's on the move again. This time he joined OpenAI, which recently filed confidentially for an IPO. Assuming he got fresh equity as part of the switch, Shazeer has once again positioned himself for another highly lucrative liquidity event.
Top AI researchers will likely tell you the talent war is about building the future. But it's also about owning a larger piece of it.
Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.