Top ex-Google AI researchers raise funding from Thrive Capital -sources

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04/05/2023 13:01

By Anna Tong and Krystal Hu
       May 4 (Reuters) - Two prominent former Google  GOOGL.O 
researchers who authored the groundbreaking paper that paved the
way for the generative AI boom, have raised $8 million for their
new startup Essential AI, four sources told Reuters.      
    Thrive Capital had led the round in Essential AI, founded by
Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar. The company is still in stealth
mode and hasn't launched any product. Conviction and angel
investor Elad Gil also participated in the round, one source
close to the company added.
    Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner, is also an
investor in Microsoft-backed OpenAI. 
    Essential AI aims to build software for enterprises to use
large language models, the core software of a new artificial
intelligence system that has powered generative AI applications
such as ChatGPT, sources said.      
    Thrive Capital declined to comment. Vaswani and Parmar
didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.      
    The raise came after Vaswani and Parmar left Adept AI, a
company they also co-founded in 2021 with former Google director
David Luan. Adept, focused on training a neural network to
perform general tasks for enterprise clients, has raised $415
million from investors including General Catalyst. EssentialAI
is not in direct competition with Adept, sources added.      
    Vaswani and Parmar are the first and third authors on
Google's 2017 research paper "Attention Is All You Need", which
introduced the "transformer" deep learning architecture that
went on to become the basis for viral chatbot ChatGPT and the
current race to develop products powered by generative AI. 
     
    The duo join other authors on the famous paper who have left
Google  GOOGL.O  to start their own ventures and subsequently
attracted millions in funding from venture investors, including
Noam Shazeer, who is running AI chatbot startup Character.AI,
and Aidan Gomez, who founded large language model startup
Cohere.

 (Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York and Anna Tong in San
Francisco; editing by Diane Craft)
 ((mailto:Krystal.Hu@thomsonreuters.com;))