Google TPU Sales Pressure on Researchers

It has been pointed out that Google Cloud's large-scale sales of its proprietary TPU to external customers such as Anthropic have made it difficult for Google's internal research teams to access the computing resources needed for experiments.

According to CNBC, researchers are facing the following issues:

• Difficulty securing TPU capacity for Gemini-related research
• Complex approval procedures required to incorporate research findings into products
• An environment where more time must be spent on managing internal processes than on research

In this context, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, who were considered key contributors to Gemini, are reportedly moving to Anthropic. Adler had been working on Google's AI coding domain, while Pritzel was involved in AI system learning processes.

Previously, there were reports that Google's star researcher John Jumper moved to Anthropic, and Noam Shazeer moved to OpenAI. The successive departures are raising concerns not only about compensation levels but also about the computing resources and organizational environment within Google that enable sustained high-intensity AI research.