{"id":13336,"date":"2024-09-26T00:10:40","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T00:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/?p=13336"},"modified":"2024-09-26T00:10:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T00:10:40","slug":"google-rehires-ai-pioneer-noam-shazeer-in-2-7-billion-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/26\/google-rehires-ai-pioneer-noam-shazeer-in-2-7-billion-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Rehires AI Pioneer Noam Shazeer in $2.7 Billion Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In August, Google entered a $2.7 billion agreement with <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.character.ai\/our-next-phase-of-growth\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">AI chatbot startup Character.AI<\/a>. The official reason? Getting a license to use Character&#8217;s technology.<\/p>\n<p>The unofficial reason? According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/tech\/ai\/noam-shazeer-google-ai-deal-d3605697\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">Wednesday Wall Street Journal report<\/a>, the consensus within Google is that the tech giant primarily wanted to rehire a former employee who quit in 2021 after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/google-ai-chatbot-bard-chatgpt-rival-bing-a4c2d2ad?mod=article_inline\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">creating an AI chatbot<\/a> that Google refused to take public.<\/p>\n<p>The engineer, 48-year-old Noam Shazeer, was one of the first hundred employees at Google. He quickly established himself as an AI expert and wrote a paper in 2017 with seven other Google employees called &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1706.03762\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">Attention is All You Need<\/a>&#8221; which introduced a new deep learning architecture. That paper has been cited by other researchers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/features\/2023-07-13\/ex-google-scientists-kickstarted-the-generative-ai-era-of-chatgpt-midjourney\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">more than 100,000 times<\/a> and established him as one of the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/eight-google-employees-invented-modern-ai-transformers-paper\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\"> inventors of modern AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>Related: <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/google-takes-on-openai-with-new-project-astra-ai-assistant\/474134\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">Google Introduces Its New Project Astra AI Assistant at I\/O Event \u2014 Here&#8217;s What Else You Missed<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Shazeer claims credit for his contributions: His LinkedIn &#8220;About&#8221; section at the time of writing reads, &#8220;I have invented much of the current revolution in large language models.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"lazyload\" loading=\"lazy\" role=\"presentation\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.entrepreneur.com\/images\/misc\/1727296370_Noam-GettyImages-1243785354.jpg?width=1000\" style=\"height:665px; width:1000px\" width=\"1000\" height=\"665\"\/><sup><i>Noam Shazeer. Credit: Winni Wintermeyer for The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/i><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>In 2021, before the release of OpenAI&#8217;s ChatGPT, Shazeer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/google-ai-chatbot-bard-chatgpt-rival-bing-a4c2d2ad?mod=article_inline\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">was working on AI at Google<\/a>. He and his colleagues created an AI chatbot that could interact with users conversationally, and they advocated for Google to demo it to the public. Google refused multiple times and Shazeer quit to start Character, building up the startup from 2021 to the present <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/08\/02\/character-ai-ceo-noam-shazeer-returns-to-google\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">with over $150 million<\/a> in funding at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2023\/03\/23\/characterai-valued-at-1-billion-after-150-million-round-from-a16z.html\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">valuation of $1 billion<\/a> as of March.<\/p>\n<p>Google&#8217;s August agreement with Character brought Shazeer back into the company as part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/08\/02\/character-ai-ceo-noam-shazeer-returns-to-google\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">DeepMind research team<\/a>, which works on AI.<\/p>\n<p>Shazeer made hundreds of millions of dollars as part of the deal, according to the WSJ.<\/p>\n<p><b>Related: <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/sergey-brin-is-back-is-google-working-on-a-god-ai-model\/479739\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Is Back at the Company &#8216;Pretty Much Every Day.&#8217; Here&#8217;s What He&#8217;s Working On.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Other big tech companies have made similar agreements recently. In late August, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/2024\/amazon-hires-covariant-founders-inks-licensing-deal-with-robotics-ai-startup-in-latest-reverse-acquihire-deal\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">Amazon signed a deal<\/a> to non-exclusively license AI models developed by AI robotics startup <a href=\"https:\/\/covariant.ai\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\">Covariant<\/a> and bring over Covariant&#8217;s co-founders and some employees.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/google-rehires-ai-pioneer-noam-shazeer-in-27-billion-deal\/480378\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In August, Google entered a $2.7 billion agreement with AI chatbot startup Character.AI. The official reason? Getting a license to use Character&#8217;s technology. The unofficial reason? According to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report, the consensus within Google is that the tech giant primarily wanted to rehire a former employee who quit in 2021 after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/assets.entrepreneur.com\/content\/3x2\/2000\/1727296340-Noam-GettyImages-1243785354.jpg?format=pjeg&auto=webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13338,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13336\/revisions\/13338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}