Alphabet shares plunge as top AI researchers jump to rivals

Alphabet Inc. saw its shares fall nearly 7% on Monday, marking the steepest one‑day decline in about a year and wiping roughly $269 billion off its market value. The sell‑off was sparked by the back‑to‑back departures of two senior DeepMind figures: Noam Shazeer, the Google VP of engineering who co‑led the Gemini AI models, left for OpenAI, and John Jumper, a Nobel‑Prize‑winning engineer behind AlphaFold, announced his move to Anthropic. Their exits underscored a widening talent war in artificial intelligence, prompting investors to question Alphabet’s ability to retain top researchers as rivals offer more agility and upside.

Analysts noted that Alphabet’s AI capital‑expenditure plan for 2026 is projected at around $190 billion, funded partly by $141 billion raised through debt and equity since October. The combination of soaring AI spend, the loss of key talent, and a decline in Alphabet’s roughly 5% stake in SpaceX added to market nervousness. While the company’s core businesses—Search, YouTube, and Cloud—remain strong, the market is now pricing in risk tied to human capital essential for future AI revenue streams.