New York, June 23, 2026, 06:01 ET
Alphabet (GOOGL) took a $225 billion hit in market value Monday, the biggest drop in a single session for the company. Shares dropped 5%, their largest fall since May 2025, after two leading Google AI researchers left for OpenAI and Anthropic, according to the Wall Street Journal, which referenced Dow Jones Market Data.
Alphabet’s selloff comes as the company is trying to raise money for its AI push. According to a June 1 filing, Alphabet plans up to $80 billion in equity offerings, with $10 billion set for a private placement to Berkshire Hathaway, to expand AI infrastructure and computing worldwide.
Nasdaq futures slid over 2% in early trading Tuesday as worries around higher borrowing costs and more debt and equity funding for AI projects weighed on sentiment. Alphabet dropped almost 3% before the bell, Reuters said.
John Jumper, a senior scientist at Google DeepMind and the co-creator of AlphaFold, said Friday he will leave for Anthropic after almost nine years at DeepMind. Jumper helped develop AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts protein structures. The system has produced over 200 million predictions. Jumper and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work.
Hassabis, in a public note, thanked Jumper and said AlphaFold had “changed the world” and proved what AI could do in science and medicine. Google DeepMind said it was grateful for his work. Anthropic told Bloomberg that Jumper is joining the company, according to the Taipei Times. Taipei Times
Noam Shazeer, who served as a Google vice president of engineering and co-led the Gemini AI model family, is leaving the company for OpenAI. Shazeer called the switch a “difficult decision.” He had been in the Gemini role since returning to Google in 2024, according to 9to5Google. 9to5Google
Shazeer is well known in AI circles, having co-authored the 2017 paper that brought out the Transformer architecture. This is the setup at the core of many large language models, which train on huge data sets to handle and generate text. He also co-founded Character.AI, then went back to Google via a licensing deal, MediaPost reported.
Google is facing new doubts from investors about holding onto top AI talent after two high-profile exits, as rivals OpenAI and Anthropic keep rolling out new consumer and enterprise AI features. D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said the scarcity of AI research talent helps the leading labs, since they can offer “less bureaucracy” and stay focused on superintelligence, or AI that could beat human performance in many areas. Reuters
Alphabet’s troubles go beyond the symbolic. Bloomberg said Jumper worked on Google’s AI coding team, which ex-employees described as having a hard time getting business clients. Rivals Anthropic and OpenAI have been picking up steam in that area.
Countering some doubts, Alphabet still has top research talent, its own chip supply, a global cloud unit, and cash coming in from Search. Sundar Pichai told investors this month that demand for Alphabet’s AI was outstripping what the company could provide and said more spending on compute is needed for users, businesses and developers.
Investors could start seeing those strengths as costly liabilities instead of a protective moat. Reuters on Monday said hyperscalers faced pressure since clear returns from AI products haven’t matched the size of their spending. David Wagner at Aptus Capital Advisors said the move was part of a broader pullback linked to concern over AI infrastructure costs.
Alphabet faces a test on Tuesday after the market’s reaction to Monday’s talent news. The question now is whether investors see it as just a blip or the start of a deeper rethink on Google’s AI profits. The company needs to keep important staff, deliver paid products, and turn its $180 billion to $190 billion capital spending into growth that satisfies investors.
