Google Rehires AI Pioneer Noam Shazeer for Gemini Development

Google announced a $2.7 billion deal to rehire former employee Noam Shazeer, a leading AI researcher who previously left to found Character.AI. The payment also covered licensing of Character.AI’s technology, but the primary motive was to bring Shazeer back to Google.

Shazeer, who joined Google in 2000, contributed to early spelling‑correction systems and co‑authored the seminal "Attention is All You Need" paper in 2017, which laid the foundation for modern generative AI. He later helped develop the Meena chatbot, a predecessor to large‑scale conversational models.

After growing frustrated with Google’s cautious AI deployment, Shazeer and colleague Daniel De Freitas left in 2021 to launch Character Technologies Inc., creating the popular Character.AI chat platform. Despite its success and a $1.5 billion funding round, the startup faced high development costs.

In September 2022, Character.AI launched, offering users AI‑driven conversations with a variety of personas. The platform gained significant attention, especially after the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Google’s senior leadership, including Sergey Brin, played a key role in persuading Shazeer to return. In August 2023, Shazeer rejoined Google as a Vice President, focusing on AI research and leading the Gemini project alongside DeepMind’s Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals.

The move is seen as strengthening Google’s position in generative AI and accelerating the development of its next‑generation Gemini model.