Google DeepMind Disbands Dedicated AlphaFold Team, Reassigns Researchers to Gemini and Isomorphic Labs

Google DeepMind has dissolved its dedicated AlphaFold team, less than two years after the project won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, reassigning most of the original paper's authors to Gemini-focused projects and other initiatives, with roughly a quarter of core full-time authors leaving the company entirely. High-profile departures include Nobel laureate John Jumper, who left DeepMind for Anthropic in June 2026 along with colleagues Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel. Remaining staff were redistributed across programs spanning enzyme design, nuclear fusion, and genomics, with some moving to Isomorphic Labs, the Alphabet drug-discovery spinoff. DeepMind research VP Pushmeet Kohli said the lab's strategy has 'evolved' from pointing a dedicated team at one grand scientific challenge toward building Gemini-powered systems meant to assist scientists broadly. A DeepMind spokesperson emphasized that AlphaFold itself is not being shut down: the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database remains freely available with 200M+ protein structure predictions, and 'many of the researchers behind AlphaFold continue today to drive scientific and technological advances across Google, Google DeepMind, and Isomorphic Labs.' The reorganization nonetheless raises questions about whether the diffused 'AI scientist' approach can reproduce AlphaFold-scale breakthroughs.