"Driving the news: A number of towering figures in the field have grown dissatisfied with their Big Tech jobs and opted to start up their own ventures. Meta AI chief scientist Yann LeCun - who has clashed with Meta leadership over research direction - is the latest star heading for the exits. Meta says it plans to partner with LeCun's new startup, which will focus on models with real-world reasoning."
"The intrigue: Even Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives, though it's now far more developed than the newer startups. It's projecting a $9 billion annual revenue run rate by year's end and has sizable investments from Google and Amazon, plus another $15 billion more in newly announced funding from Microsoft and Nvidia."
"Zoom in: There are several less well-known startups led by OpenAI alums that have raised significant funding. Worktrace AI, which aims to automate business operations by observing human workers in action, is led by Angela Jiang, an early OpenAI product manager. It has funding from a variety of investors, including Murati, ChatGPT head Nick Turley and company strategy chief Jason Kwon. Periodic Labs, a well-funded AI-for-science startup, is led by former OpenAI researcher William Fedus."
Many leading AI researchers and executives are leaving Big Tech to found startups focused on neglected areas such as safety, human-centric design, and real-world understanding. Yann LeCun left Meta to start a company centered on models with real-world reasoning, with Meta planning a partnership. Ilya Sutskever founded Safe Superintelligence after departing OpenAI and raised more than $1 billion. Mira Murati launched Thinking Machines Lab, and Jeff Bezos co-leads Project Prometheus targeting AI-enhanced hardware manufacturing. Anthropic projects a $9 billion annual run rate and has secured major investments from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Several other alumni-led startups have also raised significant funding.
Read at Axios
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]