Francois Chollet is leaving Google

If I were to speculate, I would guess he quit Google. 2 days ago, his $1+ million Artificial General Intelligence competition ended. Chollet is now judging the submissions and will announce the winners in a few weeks. The timing there can't be a coincidence.

More generally, there is unlimited opportunity in the AI space today, especially for someone of his stature, and staying tied to Google probably isn't as enticing. He can walk into any VC office and raise a hundred million dollars by the end of the day to build whatever he wants.

$100M isn't enough capital for an AI startup that's training foundation models, sadly.

A ton of folks of similar stature who raised that much burnt it within two years and took mediocre exits.

Interesting, I think $100M is totally enough to train a SotA "foundation model". It's all in the use case. I'd love to hear explicit arguments against this.

There's a bunch of failed AI companies who raised been $100M and $200M with the goal of training foundation models. What they discovered is that they were rapidly out paced by the large players, and didn't have any way to generate revenue.

You're right that it's enough to train one, but IMO you're wrong that it's enough to build a company around.