Google DeepMind Disbands Nobel-Winning AlphaFold Team as Top Researchers Join Anthropic
DeepMind has reassigned most of the AlphaFold team to Gemini and other projects after nearly a quarter of its researchers left the company, including Nobel laureate John Jumper, who joined Anthropic along with two former colleagues.
Google DeepMind has broken up the dedicated team behind AlphaFold, the protein-structure model that won its creators the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, reassigning most of its researchers to Gemini-focused projects. Nearly a quarter of the team's full-time authors have left DeepMind altogether.
- John Jumper, VP and engineering fellow, and 2024 Nobel laureate, departed for Anthropic in June 2026
- Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, both core AlphaFold authors, joined Jumper at Anthropic
- Remaining staff shifted to Gemini, enzyme design, nuclear fusion, and genomics work, or to Isomorphic Labs
- Roughly a quarter of the team's original authors have left the company entirely
The strategy over the last nine years has been to focus on grand challenges, a concrete goal every project is focused on. The strategy has evolved. - Pushmeet Kohli, VP of Research, Google DeepMind
The move signals DeepMind concentrating its top talent and resources on Gemini and general-purpose agents rather than standalone scientific breakthroughs, even as it loses key people to Anthropic in what several reports describe as a one-sided talent war between the two labs.