OpenAI hires AI pioneers Shazeer and Ball ahead of public listing

OpenAI has bolstered its ranks with two significant hires as it moves toward a public listing. Noam Shazeer, a foundational figure in modern generative AI, and Dean Ball, a former White House AI policy official, are joining the company.

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I am pleased and honoured to announce that ... I'll be joining OpenAI.

Shazeer, who co-led Google's Gemini project and founded the AI startup Character AI, announced his departure from Google. He is renowned for co-authoring the 2017 paper 'Attention Is All You Need,' which introduced the Transformer architecture essential for today's large language models. Google had previously reacquired Shazeer's startup for $2.7 billion.

Ball will join OpenAI on July 6 to head a new team called Strategic Futures. This team will report directly to Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon and concentrate on "catastrophic risk, recursive self-improvement, labour market impact, and the relationship between the frontier labs, governments ... and society." Ball previously served in the Trump White House, contributing to America's AI Action Plan.

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catastrophic risk, recursive self-improvement, labour market impact, and the relationship between the frontier labs, governments ... and society.

These appointments occur amid increasing government scrutiny of AI. The hiring of Ball, in particular, signals OpenAI's strategy to solidify its position and navigate a complex regulatory environment, especially as rivals like Anthropic face export bans on their models.

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internal governance will be "more central to the future of AI than most people realise."