Shares of Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) tumbled nearly 7% on Monday, setting up for its worst daily drop in about a year. This downturn comes as investors reacted to the recent departures of key talent in artificial intelligence and rising worries about competition in the industry.
The selloff followed news that Noam Shazeer, Google's VP of engineering and co-leader of its Gemini AI models, is leaving to take a position at OpenAI.
Shazeer had returned to Google in 2024 as part of the firm's partnership with Character.AI, the startup he co-founded after leaving Google back in 2021.
Investor anxiety grew even more when John Jumper, a senior exec at Google DeepMind, announced on Friday that he would be heading to Anthropic. Jumper is well-known for co-creating AlphaFold, a groundbreaking AI system that really changed the game in biological research.
The stock's decline was also influenced by comments from Satya Nadella, who indicated that the AI market is becoming more of a commodity and warned against depending too much on a few dominant AI players.
Alphabet has been pouring money into AI, racking up around $141 billion through debt and equity financing since October.
As AI models become more accessible and competition heats up, investors are definitely keeping a close eye on whether these investments can bring in consistent returns and help Google stay ahead in the fast-changing AI landscape.
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Business News
June 19, 2026 16:46 ET Major central banks continued to dominate the economic news flow this week too, led by the Federal Reserve, as they announced their latest policy decisions. The Federal Reserve policy session was in focus as it was the first to be led by the new chief Kevin Warsh. In Europe, central banks of the U.K. and Switzerland announced their rate decisions. In Asia, the Bank of Japan drew attention for its policy moves, while data out of China threw some light on the state of the economy.