John Jumper, an artificial intelligence scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the AlphaFold project, announced that he will be leaving Google DeepMind after nearly nine years of service to join AI startup Anthropic. Jumper confirmed the news via a post on platform X late Friday local time. He stated that DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis placed full trust in him just six months after his PhD graduation, allowing him to lead the AlphaFold team—an experience that had a profound impact on his scientific career. “DeepMind was a special place, and I will continue to follow their future breakthroughs,” Jumper wrote. As one of the core leaders of the AlphaFold project, Jumper and Hassabis jointly received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their pioneering contributions to protein structure prediction. AlphaFold uses artificial intelligence techniques to predict the three-dimensional structures of proteins based on amino acid sequences, a development widely regarded as having significantly advanced biology, drug discovery, and life sciences research. According to previous media reports, Jumper has also participated in several internal AI product R&D initiatives at Google over recent years, including programming assistance tools designed for software development scenarios. However, these enterprise-grade AI coding products have faced certain challenges in commercial promotion. Notably, DeepMind is currently undergoing another round of talent mobility. Researcher Noam Shazeer, whose influence in the field of AI was once significant, also announced this week that he would leave DeepMind; however, rather than joining Anthropic, he is moving to OpenAI. With competition in generative AI continuing to intensify, the movement of top-tier research talent between major tech companies and emerging AI labs has become an important signal of changes within the industry landscape. Jumper’s addition to Anthropic is seen as the latest move by the company to further strengthen its capabilities in frontier research.