The market increasingly thinks that Google is losing the AI race (again)
About 14 months ago shares of Google were trading at $146, down from a high of $207 just three months earlier on fears that it was floundering in the AI race. Back in 2023 it was a similar story as it had fallen to $85 from $150 on fears that AI would replace search.
Now we’re here again with shares down to $345 from $404 but in some ways this round of worries is even bigger. The problem for Google can be summarized in one word: Talent.
The market saw on the weekend that two high-profile names departed Google for rivals. John Jumper, who led AlphaFold and won the 2024 Nobel in Chemistry, is leaving Google DeepMind after 9 years to join Anthropic. He was the vice president and engineering researcher at Google DeepMind.
He posted:
A bit of news: After nearly 9 years, I have decided to leave Google DeepMind and join Anthropic (after taking some time to recharge). I am incredibly grateful for my time at GDM. @demishassabis took a real chance letting me lead the AlphaFold team just six months after finishing my PhD, and the entire GDM team taught me so much about how to do great science. GDM is a special place, and I’ll still be excited to hear about what amazing things they discover next.
At nearly the same time, Noam Shazeer, who co-led Google’s
Gemini project and founded the AI role-playing startup Character AI,
announced his departure from Google.
These are main figures and the kinds of names you would want to rely on to get Google back to the top, a spot it briefly held late last year when Gemini 3.5 was released. Since then though, the model was seemingly nerfed and then quickly surpassed by Claude, ChatGPT and open Chinese models (the GLM 5.2 model released last week is getting some real buzz).
The thinking in the market today is that if the top minds at Google don’t see them winning the race, then they have a real problem.
There are some positives and they’re working on a proprietary chip set that’s promising but no one knows how things look on the inside better than employees, and they’re leaving.
This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.