OpenAI adds heavy hitters ahead of IPO
▼ Summary
– OpenAI is hiring Google DeepMind AI legend Noam Shazeer and former Trump White House AI policy official Dean Ball.
– Shazeer, a co-author of the foundational 2017 “Attention Is All You Need” paper, previously co-founded Character AI and was re-hired by Google in a $2.7 billion deal.
– Before leaving Google, Shazeer reportedly stirred internal controversy by voicing opinions on transgender identity and the Gaza war, leading to his posts being deleted.
– Ball will lead OpenAI’s new Strategic Futures team, focusing on frontier AI policy issues like catastrophic risk, labor market impact, and government relations.
– Ball’s hire comes as rival Anthropic faces government interference, with President Trump ordering an export control ban on its latest models.
OpenAI is bolstering its executive ranks ahead of its anticipated initial public offering by bringing in two prominent figures from distinct corners of the AI world: Noam Shazeer, a legendary researcher from Google DeepMind, and Dean Ball, a former White House AI policy official under the Trump administration.
Shazeer, who served as a co-lead on Google’s Gemini project and founded the AI role-playing startup Character AI, confirmed his departure on Wednesday. His career at Google spanned from 2000, with a three-year hiatus to launch Character AI. Google reacquired Shazeer two years ago in a $2.7 billion deal that granted the tech giant access to the startup’s technology. This move is part of a broader pattern of talent exchanges among top AI labs, including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. Shazeer is widely recognized as a foundational architect of modern generative AI, having co-authored the groundbreaking 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which introduced the Transformer architecture.
During his final months at Google, Shazeer reportedly stirred internal controversy. According to The Information, he posted opinions on transgender identity and Israel’s war in Gaza on internal messaging boards, prompting management to delete his comments. It remains unclear whether these controversies will follow him to OpenAI.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is strengthening its policy team by hiring Ball. Ball spent a brief period last year in the White House, helping to draft America’s AI Action Plan before returning to the techno-libertarian think tank Foundation for American Innovation as a senior fellow. On Thursday, Ball announced on X: “I am pleased and honored to announce that, on July 6, I’ll be joining OpenAI as leader of a new team called Strategic Futures. Our mandate will be to help the company’s leadership shape frontier AI policy.”
Ball will report directly to Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon. In a blog post, he described the team as “small, high-agency” and focused on “matters pertaining to: catastrophic risk, recursive self-improvement, labor market impact, and the relationship between the frontier labs, governments (particularly the U. S. Federal Government), and society.” The Strategic Futures team will address both public-facing policy and internal governance. Ball emphasized that “almost by necessity,” AI labs will need to lead on governance decisions. “In other words, internal governance will be more central to the future of AI than most people realize,” he wrote.
Ball’s move to OpenAI comes as Anthropic faces renewed friction with the U. S. government. Late last week, President Donald Trump ordered an export control ban on Anthropic’s latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, forcing the company to take them offline to avoid noncompliance. For those watching the IPO landscape, Ball’s appointment signals how a company can lock in insider status while a rival gets squeezed. TechCrunch has contacted OpenAI for further comment.
(Source: TechCrunch)
