OpenAI hires Noam Shazeer and Dean Ball amid reported IPO preparations

TechCrunch reports that OpenAI has brought on Noam Shazeer, a co-inventor of the transformer architecture, from Google DeepMind, and has also hired former Trump administration AI policy official Dean Ball. The hires are presented as notable additions to OpenAI’s technical and policy bench as the company reportedly prepares for a future IPO.