Google Losing Top AI Executive Is ‘The Most Significant AI Talent Move of the Year.’ Is It Time to Sell Alphabet Stock?

Danielle Liverance

Sat, June 20, 2026 astatine 10:16 AM CDT 4 min read

Quick Read

• Despite losing Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer to OpenAI, Alphabet's 82% net maturation and zero expert merchantability ratings reason against dumping GOOGL.

• Microsoft's AI concern deed a $37 cardinal yearly tally rate, up 123% YoY, yet MSFT trades down 21% YTD connected superior pain fears.

• Act now: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable named his apical 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn't marque the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

The biggest communicative successful AI this week is simply a unit move. Noam Shazeer, Google DeepMind's VP of Engineering and a Gemini co-lead, is leaving for OpenAI successful what the hosts of the TBPN podcast called "the astir important AI endowment determination of the year." The time after, argumentation adept Dean Ball followed him to OpenAI. The question present circulating among investors: does this warrant selling Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) stock?

The abbreviated answer, grounded successful the data: astir apt not.

Why Shazeer Leaving Matters

TBPN big John Coogan described Shazeer arsenic a "co-author of Transformer, T5, Switch Transformer papers" and 1 of the pioneers of sparse mixture-of-experts models. A impermanent connected the amusement said the departure "makes you wonderment what's going connected astatine Google." On Ball, the aforesaid impermanent said "The main happening is helium truly cares astir getting this close arsenic a country" and noted Ball has been "critical of astir each institution successful the space." Even Jim Cramer weighed successful astir 3:00 AM, referring to OpenAI simply arsenic "AI," a shorthand the hosts recovered notable.

The substantive hazard is communicative and retention. If a researcher of Shazeer's stature walks, others whitethorn follow. That is simply a existent information for immoderate guardant thesis connected Google DeepMind's competitory presumption against OpenAI.

Act now: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable named his apical 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn't marque the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

What the Fundamentals Actually Say

Alphabet's astir caller 4th does not look similar a institution losing the AI race. In Q1 FY2026, Alphabet posted EPS of $13.10 (TTM) and gross of $422.5 cardinal (TTM), with quarterly gross maturation of 21.8% YoY and net maturation of 82% YoY. Google Cloud gross grew 63% YoY to $20.03B, with backlog astir doubling to implicit $460B. CEO Sundar Pichai noted that Gemini API usage was processing much than 16 cardinal tokens per minute, up 60% sequentially, with Gemini Enterprise increasing paid monthly progressive users 40% 4th implicit quarter. The afloat Q1 merchandise is disposable via the SEC filing and connected Alphabet's capitalist relations page.

Operating borderline came successful astatine 36.1%, instrumentality connected equity astatine 38.9%, and Waymo crossed 500,000 afloat autonomous rides per week.