Nobel Laureate John Jumper Leaves Google DeepMind for Anthropic

John Jumper led AlphaFold during nearly nine years at Google DeepMind. The system has predicted more than 200 million protein structures, helping researchers accelerate drug discovery and biological research. Jumper and Demis Hassabis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on October 9, 2024, for protein structure prediction, making his move a significant marker of the competition for top AI talent.

Jumper, a vice president at Google DeepMind, announced his departure on June 19, 2026. He plans to take a break before joining Claude developer Anthropic, though his role, compensation and start date were not disclosed. Two days earlier, Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer also left for OpenAI; Google spent $2.7 billion to bring in his team in 2024.