The "Google Gang" shines on AI, and all the authors of the Transformer paper, the foundation of the large model, leave their jobs to start their own businesses

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI

As one of the co-authors of the Transformer architecture, Llion Jones confirmed to the media last week that he will leave Google Japan later this month and plans to start a company after the leave.

With the resignation of Llion Jones, all eight Transformer authors have left Google.

Among them, except for Lukasz Kaiser who chose to join OpenAI after leaving, the remaining seven people including Llion all chose to establish their own businesses, and basically they can get VC support as soon as they leave Google——

It seems that following the famous “Fairy Boy Rebellion” and “Paypal Gang” in the history of Silicon Valley, the strongest entrepreneurial army in the era of artificial intelligence “Transformer Gang” is rising.

So far, the eight members of the “Transformer Gang” have owned a number of “unicorns” such as Cohere, Adept, Character AI, NEAR Protocol, and Inceptive, and have successfully acquired from Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, General Catalyst, Salesforce Ventures, Nvidia, and Oracle and other top investors have raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sarah Catanzaro, a partner at Amplify Partners, a venture capital firm that invested in Cohere, said:

“In the early stages, investing is really investing in people. I do think a ML (Machine Learning) background is still important, although how much depends on the technology the company is developing. "

It is worth mentioning that in the AI tide, not only the “Transformer gang” is bravely at the forefront, but also a group of big cows who have worked in “AI giants” such as OpenAI and Microsoft have also chosen to establish their own.

Catanzaro added that a technologist does not necessarily make a successful entrepreneur, and AI experts who lack the qualities and skills to start, lead, and grow a business are unlikely to be successful:

“We’re looking for two traits (in founders) — at least one. Ideally, they should have strong product and business intuition and a high level of self-awareness. At the very least, hopefully they are at least highly self-aware,"