The UK government plans to legislate against non-compete clauses, the contract terms that stop employees from joining a rival or starting a company for months after they quit. Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced the move in Manchester on October 9, and it lands squarely on one of Britain’s most prized tech employers, Google DeepMind.Some DeepMind staff in London have reportedly been barred from working for competitors for up to 12 months after leaving. Many sit out that period on garden leave, drawing full pay from Google while doing no work for it. With Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta hiring aggressively in London, those clauses have become a sore point for researchers and for the startups trying to hire them.“I believe some businesses have gone too far in their use of restrictive practices such as non-compete clauses,” Burnham said. “That’s a drag on innovation and prevents the best really being energized and bringing that dynamism to the economy.”AI minister Kanishka Narayan said on X that the government will also look at other restrictive practices, such as excessive notice periods. “We want people to have the freedom to move to a better job and help our most promising businesses grow,” he wrote.
The UK has not yet said how far its non-compete ban will go
The finer details are still open. When Keir Starmer’s government set out options in November 2025, they ranged from a total ban to a partial one, such as allowing non-competes only above a salary threshold or capping how long they can last. The final shape is expected to be worked out with industry.The push gained pace last month when 20 founders signed an open letter calling for an end to non-competes, long notice periods and garden leave. The letter came from Inherent Labs, an AI startup founded by former DeepMind staff. Founders and investors have long argued that California, which does not enforce non-competes, has a clear edge in hiring.
Google DeepMind used non-competes to keep AI talent away from rivals
At DeepMind, the length of a non-compete has reportedly depended on a person’s seniority and how critical their work is. Six months was common, including for engineers working on Gemini, while some senior researchers got a full year. Google has said its contracts are in line with market standards and that it uses non-competes selectively.Former DeepMind director Nando de Freitas, now a vice-president at Microsoft AI, said last year that DeepMind employees reached out to him every week asking how to escape their notice periods and non-competes.
DeepMind’s top researchers are leaving London for Anthropic and OpenAI
For Google, the change arrives in the middle of a run of high-profile exits. Nobel laureate John Jumper, who co-led AlphaFold, is moving to Anthropic but is not expected to start until next year, a delay that lines up with the cooling-off periods UK non-competes impose. Gemini researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel have also left for Anthropic, while Noam Shazeer joined OpenAI after more than two decades at Google.Figures from UK-based Zeki Data show DeepMind’s share of research hires across Europe, the Middle East and Africa fell from 49% in 2022-23 to 18.6% in 2025-26. Anthropic was the top destination for those who left.Not everyone backs the change. Financial services lobby group TheCityUK opposed a ban earlier this year, arguing that non-competes are often the only way to protect confidential information and intellectual property.
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