Two More Senior Google Gemini Researchers Defect to Anthropic

What happened

TechCrunch confirmed on June 24 that Jonas Adler (Google AI coding effort) and Alexander Pritzel (AI model training) are leaving Google for Anthropic — the fourth senior departure to rivals in six days.

Context and impact

Follows the departures of Nobel laureate John Jumper (DeepMind → Anthropic) and Noam Shazeer (Google → OpenAI). Bloomberg frames the moves as driven largely by pre-IPO equity opportunities at Anthropic and OpenAI. For Google this is a significant blow to Gemini's training and coding teams just as the company rolls out Gemini 3.5 and tries to close the enterprise gap with Anthropic.

Details

• Both viewed internally as key Gemini contributors
• Fourth senior Google departure to rivals in six days
• Trend driven by pre-IPO equity pressure at Anthropic and OpenAI
• Predecessors: John Jumper, Noam Shazeer
• Reflects intensifying talent war ahead of both leaders' IPOs