New York, June 19, 2026, 17:02 (EDT)
- Alphabet Class A shares rose 1.17% to close at $368.03 on Thursday, finishing the holiday-shortened week up 2.3%.
- The Nasdaq Composite gained 2.4% for the week. U.S. exchanges stayed shut Friday for Juneteenth.
- John Jumper, who helped create AlphaFold, is set to leave Google DeepMind for Anthropic. That move follows Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer leaving for OpenAI, according to Business Insider.
Alphabet is losing another big name in AI as the company heads into the long weekend. John Jumper, the Nobel-winning scientist who helped create AlphaFold, said Friday he’s leaving Google DeepMind after nearly nine years and will join Anthropic.
Nasdaq was closed, so the stock didn’t move. Alphabet finished Thursday at $368.03, up 1.2%, as Nasdaq added 1.9%. For the week, Alphabet gained 2.3%, while the index rose 2.4%. Investors hadn’t priced in a strong view on Alphabet ahead of the holiday, with both gains tracking each other.
Alphabet wants investors behind its push to turn Google’s research, custom chips and cloud muscle into a big AI business. But the loss of senior researchers puts pressure on the technical side of that plan as the company looks for new capital to grow its computing resources.
Shazeer, a Google engineering VP involved with the Gemini models, said he was “incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together.” Google issued a thank you for his work. Shazeer leaves for OpenAI less than two years after Google reportedly spent $2.7 billion on the deal that brought him and other Character.AI researchers back. Reuters
D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria told Barron’s that Google is still well positioned, but said “the race at the frontier right now appears between Anthropic and OpenAI.” Alphabet shares barely moved Thursday, showing the market sees the departures as a longer-term competitive problem rather than something that hits current earnings. Barron’s
But there was a counterbalance. The Wall Street Journal said Friday that Google is leaning on financing guarantees and partnerships with customers to get more adoption for its Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs. These custom AI chips put Google more in Nvidia’s lane, and also give Alphabet a possible payback on its infrastructure bets.
Google Cloud posted a 63% jump in revenue to $20 billion in the first quarter. CEO Sundar Pichai said, “Our enterprise AI solutions have become our primary growth driver for cloud for the first time.” Google has started selling some TPUs straight to customers, not just via its cloud. Reuters
But the plan is risky. Alphabet projects $180 billion to $190 billion of capital expenditures this year, including data centers, servers and gear, and priced an $84.75 billion equity sale this month. The new shares dilute current holders. The spending has to drive steady cloud and chip revenue; frequent talent losses to OpenAI and Anthropic could hurt the payoff.
The first read from markets is due Monday when trading picks up. If the reaction is muted, it suggests investors still care more about cloud growth and TPU numbers than people leaving. But if shares drop harder, that’s a sign talent retention is turning into a market risk, not just another Silicon Valley HR headline.
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