AlphaFold Pioneer John Jumper Departs Google DeepMind for Anthropic

John Jumper, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year, announced on Friday that he is leaving Google DeepMind to join rival AI company Anthropic after spending nearly nine years at the research lab.

In a post shared on X, Jumper expressed gratitude to DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, saying he took “a real chance” by allowing him to lead the AlphaFold project just six months after he completed his PhD. Jumper also credited the broader Google DeepMind team for teaching him how to conduct world-class scientific research.

Reflecting on his time at the company, Jumper described Google DeepMind as “a special place” and said he looks forward to seeing the future breakthroughs the organisation will continue to deliver.

According to a Bloomberg report, Jumper also played an important role in Google’s efforts to develop AI-powered coding tools. In this area, the company has reportedly struggled to achieve broad enterprise adoption.

His departure comes during a period of notable movement among senior AI researchers. Earlier this week, Character AI co-founder Noam Shazeer also announced that he would be leaving Google DeepMind, although he is set to join OpenAI rather than Anthropic.

Demis Hassabis and John Jumper were jointly awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold. This groundbreaking artificial intelligence model predicts the three-dimensional structure of proteins from their genetic sequences. The breakthrough has been widely recognised as a major advancement in computational biology and AI-driven scientific research.