John Jumper, who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis for developing the AlphaFold protein-structure prediction model, has announced he is leaving DeepMind to join Anthropicafter nearly nine years at the company. Jumper had most recently been working on coding tools at DeepMind, an area Google has struggled to commercialise.
The departure is the second high-profile exit from DeepMind this week, following Noam Shazeer’s announcement that he is joining OpenAI. AlphaFold, the AI model at the centre of Jumper’s Nobel recognition, demonstrated the ability to predict the three-dimensional structure of proteins from their genetic sequences, a breakthrough with sweeping implications for drug discovery and biological research.
