AlphaFold Creator John Jumper Leaves Google DeepMind to Join Anthropic

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John Jumper, who co-led the AlphaFold 2 project at Google DeepMind and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it, announced this week that he is leaving DeepMind after nearly nine years to join Anthropic. Jumper was 38 when he received the Nobel, making him the youngest chemistry laureate in more than 70 years. AlphaFold 2 has been used by more than two million scientists across 190 countries and its database contains over 200 million protein structure predictions, representing one of the most impactful scientific contributions of the past decade.

Bloomberg reported that Jumper was also involved in Google's coding tools team before leaving. His role at Anthropic has not been officially confirmed but the hire is widely expected to accelerate Anthropic's AI for science initiatives. Anthropic has been building deliberately toward scientific applications, opening wet labs, building the VirBench biology evaluation framework, and announcing partnerships with the Allen Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A Nobel laureate with direct experience building AI systems that have demonstrated real scientific impact is exactly the kind of hire that signals Anthropic is serious about that direction.

The timing is interesting given the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 ban. Anthropic is under significant commercial and regulatory pressure right now, but adding someone of Jumper's calibre while managing that crisis suggests the company has not lost its ability to attract top talent. DeepMind losing Jumper, who was arguably their most celebrated individual scientist, is a blow that will sting for a long time in Mountain View.

Nobel laureate John Jumper is leaving DeepMind for rival Anthropic | TechCrunchtechcrunch.com