John Jumper, a chemist and computer scientist who once shared a Nobel Prize with Demis Hassabis, announced Friday that he is leaving Google DeepMind to join Anthropic.
He’s the latest Silicon Valley name to pounce on the darling of AI startups. Jumper worked at Google for nearly a decade.
“The entire GDM team has taught me a lot about how to do good science,” he wrote in an X post on Friday. “GDM is a special place, and I can’t wait to hear what great things they discover next.”
Jumper is best known for spearheading Google’s AlphaFold team, an AI system that predicts the 3D structure of proteins from amino acid sequences.
AI-powered technology is a major advance in medical and biological research, allowing scientists to better understand protein design. With over 200 million protein structure predictions currently available, it is a resource that can shorten your research process by months or even years.
Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, said Jumper’s work with Alphafold will be a lasting legacy.
“What we achieved with AlphaFold changed the world, showed what is possible with AI in science and medicine, and lit the way for how AI can benefit humanity,” he wrote.
Hassabis and Jumper jointly won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of AlphaFold.
Jumper’s departure to Anthropic coincides with a string of technology leaders from companies like Google and Meta leaving for major AI startups. Companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are some of the hottest in the tech space, especially now as both companies prepare for initial public offerings.
Jumper declined to discuss his role at the AI giant. First, he said, “It takes time to charge.”