Noam Shazeer, the AI researcher who co-invented the Transformer architecture underlying modern large language models, remains at Google DeepMind as vice president of engineering and Gemini co-lead, according to his current LinkedIn profile and recent reporting through mid-2026.
Shazeer’s career trajectory has been marked by high-stakes moves between major AI players. He left Google in October 2021 to found Character.AI, a chatbot startup backed by venture capital, after the search giant declined to release a conversational AI system he had developed.
Google’s response came in August 2024, when the company announced a $2.7 billion deal to bring Shazeer back. The official framing was a licensing agreement for Character.AI’s technology, but the arrangement also included Shazeer’s return to Google’s DeepMind unit as a leader on its flagship Gemini project.
By late 2025, Google’s AI investments had yielded visible momentum. The company launched Nano Banana, an image generation model, and Veo, a video generation system, both receiving recognition as leading-edge offerings. Gemini reached over 650 million monthly active users by October 2025, up from 450 million in July, according to Wall Street Journal reporting.
Shazeer’s contributions to AI extend beyond his current role. He co-authored “Attention Is All You Need,” the 2017 paper that introduced the Transformer architecture—the foundational technology behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and most modern language models. At Character.AI, he brought transformer-based dialogue systems to consumers before OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in November 2022.
The AI talent market has seen significant movement in 2026. According to a January 2026 analysis, while many researchers have departed OpenAI, Google has consolidated leadership in consumer-facing AI products, with Shazeer playing a central role in that strategy.
Sources
- LinkedIn — Noam Shazeer’s current profile as VP Engineering, Gemini co-lead at Google DeepMind
- Wall Street Journal — Google’s $2.7 billion deal to rehire Shazeer and license Character.AI technology; Gemini user growth figures
- CNBC — Announcement of Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas joining Google’s DeepMind from Character.AI in August 2024
- TechCrunch — Character.AI co-founder Shazeer’s return to Google after leaving in October 2021
- Games of Strategy (Substack) — January 2026 analysis of AI leadership movements and Google’s return to dominance
