Google Turned Down This Man's Request, He Left, Now Rehired For Rs 22,625 Crore – Here’s Why

Noam Shazeer joined Google in 2000 and quickly became a star in its AI development team. He worked on groundbreaking AI projects and even developed Meena, a chatbot so advanced that he once predicted it could replace Google’s search engine.

In 2021, Shazeer and his colleague Daniel De Freitas created a chatbot they wanted to launch, but Google turned them down, worried about safety and fairness. Frustrated, Shazeer left the company, feeling that Google wasn’t ready to embrace his vision, reported Wall Street Journal.

After leaving Google, Shazeer co-founded Character.AI, which quickly became one of the hottest AI startups in Silicon Valley. Within a year, the company reached a 1 billion dollars valuation, proving that Shazeer’s ideas had huge potential.

Seeing the success of Character.AI, Google knew it had to act. The tech giant struck a USD 2.7 billion deal to rehire Shazeer and gain access to Character.AI’s technology, skipping long regulatory processes and securing his return.

Now back at Google, Shazeer will be leading the development of Gemini, Google’s next-generation AI model. This project is Google’s big move to stay ahead of competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Shazeer’s return is a big deal for Google. Even former CEO Eric Schmidt once said Shazeer had the potential to build human-level AI models. His comeback could be a game-changer for Google’s future in AI.

As part of the deal, Shazeer earned hundreds of millions from his stake in Character.AI. Google spent Rs 22,625 crore (USD 2.7 billion) to secure his return, making it one of the most significant rehire packages in the industry!