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Alphabet Posts 82% Growth, VPs Defect After $2.7B Deal

6/23/2026

Summary

Story summary

On June 19 and June 18, DeepMind VP John Jumper and Alphabet engineering VP Noam Shazeer announced they will leave Alphabet for Anthropic PBC and OpenAI, after paying $2.7 billion to reacquire Shazeer’s startup Character AI in 2024.
Alphabet posted Q1 earnings with 82 % growth and zero analyst sell ratings despite talent losses.
Analyst Gil Luria said AI frontier pits Anthropic against OpenAI, with Alphabet set to raise $80 billion to fund $180 billion-$190 billion spending.

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Story summary

On June 19 and June 18, DeepMind VP John Jumper and Alphabet engineering VP Noam Shazeer announced they will leave Alphabet for Anthropic PBC and OpenAI, after paying $2.7 billion to reacquire Shazeer’s startup Character AI in 2024.
Alphabet posted Q1 earnings with 82 % growth and zero analyst sell ratings despite talent losses.
Analyst Gil Luria said AI frontier pits Anthropic against OpenAI, with Alphabet set to raise $80 billion to fund $180 billion-$190 billion spending.