OpenAI hires – OpenAI is building out its leadership bench ahead of its public debut, adding former Google DeepMind co-lead Noam Shazeer and former Trump White House AI policy official Dean Ball, two hires that sharpen both its technical pedigree and its policy positioning.
OpenAI is adding two high-profile names to its team as it moves toward its public debut: Noam Shazeer, a Google DeepMind figure central to modern generative AI, and Dean Ball, a former White House official who now says he’s joining to shape frontier AI policy.
Shazeer announced his departure from Google on Wednesday. He had been at the company since 2000, stepping away for a three-year period to co-found Character AI before Google rehired him two years ago in a $2.7 billion deal that gave the tech giant access to the startup’s technology.
Shazeer isn’t just another executive arrival. He’s credited as one of the foundational minds behind today’s generative AI, including through his role in co-authoring the 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which introduced the Transformer architecture.
Google’s internal politics, however, have followed Shazeer in the background. Before leaving. The Information reported that he’d voiced opinions on internal messaging boards about transgender identity and Israel’s war in Gaza. and that management deleted his posts. Whether that history is carried into his next job is still an open question.
OpenAI, for its part, is also shoring up its policy credentials. Ball—who served briefly last year in the White House. where he helped publish America’s AI Action Plan before stepping down—rejoined the techno-libertarian think tank the Foundation for American Innovation as a senior fellow. On Thursday. he posted on X that on July 6 he would join OpenAI as leader of a new team called Strategic Futures.
Ball said the team’s mandate would be to help the company’s leadership shape frontier AI policy. He’ll report directly to Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon. and OpenAI’s new unit is described as “small” and “high-agency. ” focusing on catastrophic risk. recursive self-improvement. labor market impact. and the relationship between the frontier labs. governments—especially the U.S. Federal Government—and society.
In a blog post, Ball said the Strategic Futures team will handle both public-facing policy and internal governance. He emphasized that internal governance will have to take a more central role than many people expect. writing that “almost by necessity. ” AI labs will have to lead on AI governance decisions.
The timing lands amid fresh friction between major AI labs and the U.S. government. Late last week, President Donald Trump ordered an export control ban on Anthropic’s latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. The order forced Anthropic to take the models down entirely to avoid noncompliance.
For Ball, the move into OpenAI—an administration favorite in the same political ecosystem—reads like a kind of lock-in: while one competitor is pulled into compliance, OpenAI is bringing in a former insider to help steer how it navigates policy before and after it goes public.
TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for more information.
OpenAI Noam Shazeer Dean Ball Strategic Futures IPO Google DeepMind Character AI Transformer AI policy frontier AI catastrophic risk export controls Anthropic