New Delhi, June 29 -- The race for artificial intelligence is no longer being fought only through big models or larger infrastructure investments. Increasingly, it is becoming a competition for the people building those systems. As AI companies prepare for the next phase of commercial expansion, the movement of senior researchers is emerging as one of the industry's biggest strategic indicators.

That shift has become more visible over the past few weeks as several prominent AI researchers have left Google to join rivals Anthropic and OpenAI, highlighting how aggressively the leading AI labs are competing for top scientific talent.

Google remains one of the biggest investors in artificial intelligence, spending billions of dollars on AI ...