Google paid $2.7 billion to bring back an IT specialist who had left the company

Google has made a $2.7 billion deal with Character AI, a startup founded by Noam Shazeer, a former employee of the tech giant. According to sources, Google’s main goal was to bring Shazeer, known for his AI research, back to the company. Shazeer is now a Vice President at Google, working on AI algorithms, including the Gemini project, as reported by Forbes.According to the report, Google agreed to pay a substantial licensing fee solely to bring Shazeer back. Informed sources say Shazeer earned hundreds of millions of dollars from his stake in Character AI. Forbes calls him a genius in AI development.Noam Shazeer worked at Google starting in 2000. In 2017, he published the paper “Attention is All You Need,” which became the foundation for generative neural network technology. He later created the chatbot Meena and predicted that chatbots would soon replace Google’s search engine, generating trillions of dollars in revenue.Shazeer founded Character AI, which raised $150 million in investments after two years and was valued at $1 billion. Amid competition with OpenAI and Microsoft, Shazeer sought more funding for his startup and ultimately reached an agreement with Alphabet, Google’s parent company. As a result of the deal, Shazeer and several dozen employees from Character AI joined Google.