Google DeepMind has effectively disbanded the development team behind AlphaFold, the AI system that won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024 for predicting protein structures. The majority of researchers who authored the main AlphaFold papers have moved to other projects, particularly those centered on Gemini, Google's large language model (LLM), or have left the company entirely.

Why Is Google Shutting Down Its Nobel Prize-Winning Team?

This restructuring reflects a fundamental shift in Google DeepMind's strategy for scientific research. Rather than assembling specialized teams to tackle individual scientific challenges, the company is pivoting toward using Gemini as a foundation to support researchers across multiple domains. The goal is to develop a general-purpose system that can automate parts of scientific research itself, rather than building dedicated tools for specific problems.

Pushmith Kohli, who leads the AI for Science division at Google DeepMind, explained the reasoning behind this transition. The company had previously formed specialized teams for each major challenge over the past nine years, but the strategy has evolved to leverage large-scale language models not merely as conversational AI, but as accelerators for scientific discovery across disciplines.

What's Happening to the AlphaFold Researchers?

Personnel changes reveal the scope of the team's dissolution. A Financial Times analysis found that most researchers who authored the main AlphaFold papers have moved to other projects within the past year. Some have transitioned to Gemini-based research, while others have shifted to enzyme design, genome research, and nuclear fusion projects.

The exodus includes some of AlphaFold's most prominent figures. John Jumper, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on protein structure prediction and led AlphaFold's development, initially moved to Google's internal AI coding team called Code Strike before announcing his departure to join competitor Anthropic. Jonas Adler, another AlphaFold researcher, also moved to Code Strike and subsequently joined Anthropic. Alexander Pritzel, who contributed to AlphaFold's development, is expected to join Anthropic as well.

About a quarter of the full-time Google DeepMind researchers who contributed to the main AlphaFold paper have already left Google entirely.

Is AlphaFold Actually Being Shut Down?

Despite the team's dissolution, the AlphaFold system itself will not be discontinued. Google DeepMind has confirmed that AlphaFold and its related services will remain operational and continue to serve the scientific community. The company still presents AlphaFold as a significant achievement in scientific research, noting that it is used by more than 3 million researchers worldwide.

Technologies derived from AlphaFold have also been carried forward to other initiatives. Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet subsidiary focused on AI-powered drug discovery that was established in 2021 to apply AlphaFold's technology to pharmaceutical development, continues to advance this work. The company has partnered with major pharmaceutical firms including Novartis and Eli Lilly.

How to Understand Google DeepMind's New Scientific Research Strategy

• From Specialized to General-Purpose: Google DeepMind is moving away from building dedicated teams for individual scientific challenges and toward using Gemini as a foundation to support research across multiple domains simultaneously.
• Language Models as Research Accelerators: Rather than treating large language models as conversational tools, Google DeepMind now views them as instruments to automate and accelerate scientific discovery processes across diverse fields.
• Preservation of Existing Tools: While the AlphaFold development team has been disbanded, the AlphaFold system, database, and related services remain active and continue to serve millions of researchers globally.

This strategic pivot is not unique to Google DeepMind. The movement to utilize large-scale language models as foundations for accelerating scientific discovery is spreading to competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic, indicating a broader industry trend toward general-purpose AI systems for research.

Google DeepMind has stated that it remains proud of AlphaFold's global impact and scientific achievements. The restructuring is characterized not as a discontinuation of AlphaFold's work, but rather as an evolution from a system where dedicated teams solve specific problems to one where AI, centered around Gemini, supports a wide range of scientific research endeavors.