John Jumper, a key figure in the groundbreaking AlphaFold project that unlocked protein structures, is leaving Google DeepMind for competitor Anthropic.

In a post on X, Jumper reminisced about his tenure at DeepMind and thanked CEO Demis Hassabis for giving him the opportunity to lead the AlphaFold team early in his career. He added that he remains excited by what lies ahead for GDM, suggesting a certain optimism despite the move.

Bloomberg reports that Jumper was instrumental in developing coding tools at Google, which faced challenges in commercialization. His departure follows that of Character AI co-founder Noam Shazeer, who has also joined OpenAI.

With Jumper’s expertise now moving to Anthropic, the future of protein prediction and AI development could take an interesting turn, leaving DeepMind with a gap to fill.