Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025.
With the AI talent wars heating up between companies like OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic, one way Google has been competing is by aggressively rehiring former employees.
Some 20% of software engineers working on artificial intelligence that Google hired in 2025 were so-called boomerang employees, an increase from prior years, CNBC has learned. A Google spokesperson confirmed the statistic remains accurate as of December, and said the company saw a jump in the number of AI researchers coming from major competitors compared to 2024.
"We're energized by our momentum, compute, and talent -- engineers want to work here to keep building groundbreaking products," the spokesperson said in a statement.
John Casey, Google's head of compensation, recently told employees in a meeting about the rehiring. Casey said AI-focused software engineers are drawn to Google's deep pockets and hefty computational infrastructure that's needed to perform advanced AI work, according to audio reviewed by CNBC.
Google has a large pool of ex-employees to mine, particularly after its largest ever round of layoffs in early 2023, when parent company Alphabet cut 12,000 jobs, reducing headcount by 6%. That followed a market downturn driven by soaring inflation and rising interest rates. Google has since continued with rolling layoffs and buyouts.
Across the industry, employee boomerangs are up, according to data published earlier this year by ADP Research, with the sector it classifies as information showing the starkest numbers.