Google Rehires AI Star Barret Zoph as VP to Lead Gemini Research

Google DeepMind appointed Barret Zoph as vice president of research. Zoph will focus on reinforcement learning and post-training for the company's Gemini models.

This move marks Zoph’s second tenure at Alphabet's Google. He previously co-founded Thinking Machines Lab before departing the startup in January 2026.

Zoph most recently served as VP of Research at rival OpenAI. He exited OpenAI in June 2026 following a five-month tenure.