Google Puts Character.AI Co-founder On Gemini: Reports

Google recruited Noam Shazeer in a funding and licensing deal.

Google has named Noam Shazeer, the Character.AI CEO and co-founder recruited in a funding deal with the startup, as a technical lead on its Gemini artificial intelligence project, according to multiple media reports.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based cloud and AI vendor will have Shazeer work with researchers Oriol Vinyals and Jeff Dean to improve Gemini as Google goes toe-to-toe with competitive offerings from Microsoft and OpenAI, according to The Information.

Google paid billions of dollars to Character to recruit Shazeer and other employees and to form a licensing agreement related to AI, according to Reuters.

[RELATED: Google Gets Character.AI Co-founders In New Deal]

Google And Character.AI

In the deal, which happened earlier this month, Google also got Daniel De Freitas, the startup’s president. Character.AI was formed in 2022.

Google has been reportedly investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Character even as it invests billions into fellow AI startup Anthropic.

During Google’s most recent quarterly earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said there are now more than 1.5 million developers using Gemini across Google’s developer tools and that “Gemini is making Google’s own products better.”