In preparation for its public launch, OpenAI has brought on some big names to its team, including Google DeepMind AI legend Noam Shazeer and former President Trump’s AI policy strategist Dean Ball.
Shazeer, co-leader of Gemini and founder of AI role-playing startup Character AI, announced his retirement from Google on Wednesday. He had been with the company since 2000, but only left for three years to co-found Character AI. Two years ago, Google rehired Shazeer in a $2.7 billion deal that gave the tech giant access to the startup’s technology.
The move is the latest in a series of shuffles among top AI labs including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. Shazeer is credited as one of the foundational ideas behind modern generative AI. He is a co-author of the seminal 2017 paper “Attending Is All You Need,” which introduced the Transformer architecture.
Before leaving Google, Shazeer also reportedly made waves on political issues. According to The Information, Shazier expressed his opinions on transgender identity and Israel’s war in Gaza on an internal bulletin board, resulting in management removing his posts.
It remains to be seen whether these controversies will carry over to his new employer. Meanwhile, OpenAI strengthens its policy credentials by welcoming Ball to the team. Ball had a brief stint in the White House last year, where he helped publish the U.S. AI Action Plan, before stepping down and rejoining the techno-libertarian think tank American Innovation Foundation as a senior fellow.
“I am pleased and honored to announce that I will be joining OpenAI as the leader of a new team called Strategic Futures on July 6th,” Ball wrote on Thursday X. “Our mission is to help company leadership develop cutting-edge AI policies.”
Mr. Ball will report directly to Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon. The “small high-level agency team” will focus on “matters related to catastrophic risks, reflexive self-improvement, labor market impacts, and relationships with Frontier Institute, governments (particularly the U.S. federal government), and society,” Ball said in a blog post.
The Strategic Futures team will be responsible for both external policy and internal governance, he added. The last one is important. Ball said “almost inevitably” the AI Institute will need to lead AI governance decisions.
“In other words, internal governance will be more central to the future of AI than many realize,” Ball wrote.
Ball’s decision to join OpenAI (arguably AI’s favorite in the administration) comes amidst another battle between the U.S. government and anthropology. Late last week, President Donald Trump issued an export ban on Anthropic’s latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, forcing the AI company to remove the models entirely to avoid violations. For those who had “government interference” on their S-1 risk factor bingo card, the ball is a reflection of what happens when a company locks in its insider status and rivals are squeezed.
TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for more information.
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