Google Shuts AlphaFold Team, Reassigns Staff to Gemini After 2024 Nobel Win
Updated
Updated · Engadget · Jul 29
Google Shuts AlphaFold Team, Reassigns Staff to Gemini After 2024 Nobel Win
3 articles · Updated · Engadget · Jul 29
Summary
Most key AlphaFold researchers and original paper authors have been reassigned or have left Google, effectively ending the DeepMind team behind the protein-structure AI, the Financial Times reported.
Google confirmed internal moves to Gemini-focused projects and shifted some former AlphaFold staff to Isomorphic Labs, reflecting a broader resource push toward its flagship generative AI effort.
AlphaFold, launched in 2018, solved the 50-year protein-folding problem in 2020 and later underpinned a free database with more than 200 million protein structure predictions.
The project’s scientific impact reached a peak in 2024, when DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and researcher John Jumper won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Jumper left for Anthropic in June.