Google has agreed to pay $2.7 billion to bring back artificial intelligence expert Noam Shazeer, who left the company to start his own venture. Shazeer, a software engineer who joined Google in 2000, departed in 2021 after his request to launch a chatbot he developed with colleague Daniel De Freitas was denied, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Following his departure, Shazeer and De Freitas founded Character.AI, which quickly became one of Silicon Valley’s leading AI startups, achieving a valuation of $1 billion last year. In a recent move, Google announced that both will join its AI division, DeepMind. The substantial licensing deal allows Google to access Character.AI’s technology right away, bypassing regulatory delays, and is seen as a key factor in Shazeer’s return, the report noted.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has expressed strong confidence in Shazeer’s abilities, stating in 2015 that he is among the most likely candidates to develop human-level AI. In 2017, Shazeer created Meena, a chatbot capable of engaging in diverse conversations. Although he predicted that Meena could one day replace Google’s search engine, the company opted not to release it, citing safety and fairness concerns.
Now, Shazeer is set to lead the development of Gemini, Google’s next-generation AI model, aimed at competing with rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
