Influential AI researcher François Cholet is launching a new startup aimed at building cutting-edge AI systems with novel designs.
Ndea, a startup, consists of an AI research and science lab. We aim to develop and operate AGI. AGI stands for “artificial general intelligence” and refers to AI that can perform any task that a human can normally perform. This is a goal for many AI companies, including OpenAI.
“We are betting on a different path to building an AI that can truly invent, adapt, and innovate,” Chollet wrote in a series of posts about X. They can learn at least as efficiently as humans and can continue to improve over time with no visible bottlenecks. ”
Ndea plans to use a technique called program synthesis in conjunction with other technological approaches to achieve AGI. Chollet believes that program synthesis, which allows AI to generalize from a few examples to problems never seen before, could help overcome some of the toughest problems in AI research.
Program synthesis is traditionally computationally intensive. But Chole believes this limitation can be overcome, and that overcoming it will help accelerate scientific progress.
“[W]We're not alone in recognizing the potential of program synthesis. This is a technology that every frontier AI lab is now starting to explore,” says a blog post on Ndea’s website. “We are on the cusp of a pivotal moment in scientific history, and the world deserves every possible direct and unique attempt to build AGI.”
Francois Cholet (left) and Mike Knoop. Image credit: Ndea
Ndea, which Chollet co-founded with Zapier co-founder and head of AI Mike Knoop, has not disclosed whether it has raised funding from outside investors. But the company is currently hiring for remote research positions, suggesting at least some financial support is available.
It's not every day that you come across people at that level. @fchollet and @mikeknoop Decided to establish a company! I'm excited to be a supporter, but importantly, their vision for how to solve difficult problems in AI is amazing. Our field is dominated by hype and hope -… https://t.co/7u6OT1vrHc
— Naveen Rao (@NaveenGRAo) January 15, 2025
Mr. Knoop is stepping away from day-to-day operations at Zapier to focus on Ndea, but said he intends to remain a member of Zapier's board of directors.
“We are building the world's top program synthesis team,” Knoop said in a post to X. “Our initial focus is deep learning-based program synthesis to create AGI that can invent, adapt, and innovate. But even more exciting is the opportunity to metaphorically time travel into the future, It's an opportunity to learn, invent and discover things that wouldn't have happened naturally in years, or even centuries.”
Chollet, who recently started a nonprofit with Knoop to develop benchmarks for AGI, is the latest high-profile AI researcher to leave Big Tech to start an independent AI lab. Chollet, perhaps best known as the creator of Keras, a high-level open source API that can be used to create AI models and tackle machine learning tasks, quit Google last November after nearly a decade. announced that he would be retiring.
Ilya Satskeva, former chief scientist and co-founder of OpenAI, last year founded Safe Superintelligence, an AI research institute that has raised more than $1 billion in funding from investors including Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. Feifei Li, a longtime Google AI researcher and Stanford University academic, also leads World Labs, a company that develops AI systems that can generate 3D video game-like simulations.