In 2017, a group of 8 Google employees collaborated to write a paper titled “Attention Is All You Need,” presenting the Transformer algorithm that has now become the foundation of large-scale AI models. Currently, none of these 8 employees are with Google anymore, as they have each moved on to start their own companies. Among the most prominent is Character.ai, founded by Noam Shazeer, who was ranked second in the paper and was also part of the TensorFlow development team. Recently, Ashish Vaswani, the first author of the paper, and Niki Parmar, ranked third, launched a new company called Essential AI. This company has received significant investments, including from Google, and has raised a staggering $56.5 million in Series A funding.
Essential AI defines itself as wanting to create an Enterprise Brain, developing AI products that address workflow issues within organizations, such as data analysis and risk assessment. Their proprietary LLM model is utilized to create a superior user experience (UX). Notable investors in Essential AI include March Capital, Thrive Capital, AMD, Franklin Venture Partners, Google, KB Investment, and NVIDIA.
Before founding Essential AI together, both Vaswani and Parmer previously started a company called Adept in the field of AI in 2022. However, their time with Adept was short-lived, and they quickly shifted their focus towards Essential AI instead.
TLDR: Former Google employees, including Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar, have gone on to create their own successful AI companies. Vaswani and Parmar have recently launched Essential AI, which aims to develop AI products for enterprise workflow optimization. The company has received substantial funding, including from Google. Prior to Essential AI, Vaswani and Parmar started another AI company called Adept.
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