Former Google and Meta Engineers Announce AI Startup

Six months ago, a software engineer named David Petrou left Google after 17 years to start his AI company. After months of silence, the former Googler has revealed some exciting updates regarding the startup named Continua. 

Petrou, a founding member of projects like Google Goggles and Google Glass, has a track record of leading large teams pioneering on-device machine intelligence. Now, he finds himself among a select group of individuals, including former colleagues and industry experts.

The lineup of Petrou's team includes Jonathan Betz, formerly of Meta, JT DiMartile, who held a senior staff motion designer position, as well as names like George Nachman, Jason Bacasa, Noah Lieberman (with experience at WhatsApp, Google, and AOL), Daniel Switkin (a former Google Staff Software Engineer and the visionary behind the first version of Oculus Avatar Editor), Ken Bowden (formerly of Slack), and Jason Hunter (with previous stints at Google and Microsoft).

While the specifics of the startup's financial backing remain undisclosed, Petrou confirmed that they have received investments from prominent investors and angel backers. The company has also recently established a presence in San Francisco's Financial District.

Without revealing much about the product under process, the company's website provides a glimpse into the work in progress, describing it as "a mission to revolutionize how people interact with information, services, and each other by applying always-on, deeply integrated language models." 

The team is currently looking for software engineers skilled in a wide range of areas, spanning machine learning, systems/infrastructure, iOS, Android, and web frontend development, as indicated on their career page.

In closing, Petrou shared his vision, stating, "Together, we'll bring our vision of personal agents endowed with LLMs (large language models) to the world. It will be hard work, there are open-ended problems to solve, but it will be an adventure."