John Jumper (존 점퍼), a 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner, is leaving Google DeepMind to join AI startup Anthropic, Business Insider reported on June 19 local time.

Jumper is a chemist and computer scientist who worked at DeepMind for about 10 years. He said on X, formerly Twitter, that the entire DeepMind team taught him a lot about how to do great science.

He led the AlphaFold team, which built an AI system that predicts 3D structure from a protein's amino acid sequence. AlphaFold currently provides structure prediction data for more than 200 million proteins and has become a key tool that cuts research time by months to years in new drug development and biological research. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis (데미스 하사비스) and Jumper jointly won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold.

Jumper's move extends a trend of key staff at big tech companies such as Google and Meta shifting to AI startups such as Anthropic and OpenAI. Both companies are preparing for IPOs, intensifying competition to recruit talent. Jumper did not disclose what role he will take at Anthropic and said he would first take time to recharge.