Google apparently spent Billions on one AI talent

Google has spent around $2.7 billion to bring AI expert Noam Shazeer back to the company. Shazeer, co-author of a groundbreaking AI research paper, left Google in 2021 to start his own company, Character.AI. When that ran into trouble, Google offered the large sum – officially for a technology license. In reality, however, the main goal was seemingly to get him back on board. At least that’s what the Wall Street Journal reports, citing insiders. Shazeer is now leading the development of the next version of Google’s Gemini AI technology.