Why did Google pay $2.7 bn for an ex-AI employee?
Noam Shazeer, one of the earliest Googlers, who joined Google in 2000, had left to establish Character.AI. Recently, Google made headlines by acquiring Character.AI for a staggering $2.7 billion and welcoming Shazeer back in a vice president role to spearhead Gemini, Google's artificial intelligence (AI) project. The hefty investment made by Google in AI technologies has caught the attention of many industry observers.
Was it all for Shazeer?
Questions have been raised about whether Google's significant investment in the acquisition was solely to bring Shazeer back into the fold. Did Google opt for an acquihire of Character.AI primarily to leverage Shazeer's expertise in AI? These queries have been circulating within the tech community, particularly in Silicon Valley, where concerns about major tech companies overspending on AI initiatives have been growing.
Who is Noam Shazeer?
Noam Shazeer initially joined Google as a software engineer in 2000 and subsequently served as a principal software engineer, contributing significantly to research that laid the groundwork for modern AI technologies. During his tenure at Google, Shazeer played a key role in the development of a chatbot designed to revolutionize human-AI interactions. Despite the potential of the chatbot, Google decided against its release due to safety and fairness concerns. This led Shazeer to leave the company and establish Character.AI, focusing on creating chatbot assistants for individuals experiencing loneliness and depression.
Google's Strategic Move
Google's acquisition of Character.AI not only addressed the financial challenges faced by Shazeer's company but also reintegrated his expertise and talent back into Google. By bringing Shazeer on board as the VP engineer and co-lead of Gemini, Google seems to have made a strategic move to enhance its AI capabilities and tap into Shazeer's wealth of experience in the field.
