Google and the transformer: eight authors gone, $2.7 billion for a return
The paper Attention Is All You Need has surpassed 250,000 citations, and none of its eight authors still work at Google. The company paid approximately $2.7 billion to bring one back, who left for OpenAI in June 2026. The real regret is not having published it, but having the product without releasing it.
This is a short excerpt.
The full version, with its sources, and the podcast are for subscribers. The account is free.