Former employees of companies like OpenAI and Microsoft are creating some of the most promising startups in the artificial intelligence sector
When we look at the executives responsible for the AI boom , we see many familiar faces. They frequently move from company to company, and some are launching their own products. It’s reminiscent of the “PayPal Mafia” of the early 2000s, a group of former employees who went on to run companies like Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Palantir.
This time, the talent is coming from AI giants like OpenAI, Google and Apple. “There are 20,000 to 30,000 companies that have emerged because more people are willing to leave the labs,” says HP Newquist , CEO of Relayer Group and a self-described historian of artificial intelligence. “It’s a group that really understands how this all works.”
OPENAI TALENTS
Several former OpenAI employees have gone on to found some of the largest AI companies. In 2021, VP of Research Dario Amodei stepped down from his role along with his sister Daniela, who was VP of Security and Policy.
The two men went on to create Anthropic, bringing at least nine other former employees with them. Anthropic developed Claude, a chatbot that competes directly with ChatGPT. In May, another researcher, Jan Leike, also left the company, citing “security concerns,” and joined the team at a rival startup.
Aravind Srinivas, also a former researcher at OpenAI, became one of the co-founders of Perplexity, a search engine that crawls vast amounts of digital content to create a database of the information it finds.
In May, “ Bloomberg ” reported that the developer of ChatGPT was investing in a search function to compete with its former employee’s product.
Another example is Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI. After supporting the brief resignation of CEO Sam Altman (something he later said he regretted doing), Sutskever left to start his own company. Little is known about Safe Superintelligence Inc. , except that it bills itself as the “world’s first direct SSI lab.”
20,000 to 30,000 companies
have emerged because more
people are willing to leave the labs.
Elon Musk has also left OpenAI. Musk was a co-founder and key investor but left in 2018, citing a conflict of interest — though reports say his relationship with Altman was complicated. The billionaire is now investing in his own artificial intelligence venture, xAI.
Other former employees have gone on to create more than a dozen independent companies and startups. Cresta, a generative AI service for contact centers and sales teams, was founded by former OpenAI technical fellow Tim Shi.
Daedalus, which develops precision AI, was founded by the company’s former technical lead Jonas Schneider. And Gantry, a machine learning infrastructure startup, was created by former research scientist Josh Tobin.
OTHER BIG NAMES IN THE INDUSTRY
Google has also seen a number of talented individuals move on to new paths. Lending platform Upstart is backed by a founding team of former employees Dave Girouard (former president of the company) and Anna Counselman (former manager of global enterprise client programs).
Self-driving car company Nuro is led by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, both former Google engineers. The founders of popular AI translator Lilt met while working at Google Translate.
This list gets even longer with DeepMind, which was acquired in 2014 and became part of Google's AI division in 2023. Mistral, Europe's largest artificial intelligence company, was created by former senior research scientist Arthur Mensch.
Mustafa Suleyman, one of the biggest names in AI today, left Google and started his own venture, Inflection AI, before joining Microsoft.
Apple is a latecomer to the AI game, having only announced its Apple Intelligence product at its annual developer summit in June. Still, the company has former employees spread across the industry.
Imran Chaudhri was a top designer at Apple for more than 20 years, working on classic technologies like the Mac and iPhone. After leaving in 2017, he founded Humane, the AI-powered consumer electronics company behind the Pin, which its creators have called "the first wearable computer with artificial intelligence."
"It's a group that
really understands
how it all works."
Humane, meanwhile, has seen its own team fragment, with two executives leaving to found their own AI fact-checking company, Infactory.
After selling Workflow to Apple in 2017, Ari Weinstein and Conrad Kramer recruited their senior product manager, Kim Beverett, launching a company that tries to bring AI to desktop applications
WHY THE INDUSTRY IS SETTING UP LIKE THIS
HP Newquist attributes this to the restlessness that tech workers start to feel when they’re in a booming industry. Many want to be their own boss and make a lot of money. Plus, having a big-name company like OpenAI or Apple on their resume increases the chances of their new venture succeeding.
“It’s hard to do that organically if you’re not part of that ecosystem,” Newquist explains. “You have to have a connection to a place or a project to give investors a greater sense of security.”
The AI industry is booming. Startups are receiving millions in funding. But Newquist believes some may not last long. “Explosive growth inevitably results in negative consequences,” he says.
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