François Chollet, a prominent artificial intelligence researcher, has embarked on a new venture, Ndea, a startup dedicated to building frontier AI systems with innovative designs. Chollet, known for creating the high-level, open-source API Keras, is co-founding Ndea with Mike Knoop, co-founder and head of AI at Zapier. The startup's primary objective is to "develop and operationalize" artificial general intelligence (AGI), a long-term goal for many AI companies, including OpenAI.

Chollet believes that Ndea's approach, which combines program synthesis with other technical methods, can help overcome the most significant challenges in AI research. Program synthesis, a technique that enables AI to generalize to problems it hasn't seen before from only a few examples, has the potential to accelerate scientific progress. Although traditionally computing-intensive, Chollet is confident that this limitation can be overcome, paving the way for groundbreaking advancements in AI.

Ndea's mission is to create AI capable of true invention, adaptation, and innovation, with the potential to learn as efficiently as humans and continuously improve over time without bottlenecks. Chollet's vision is to develop AI that can metaphorically "time-travel into the future," learning, inventing, and discovering things that would not naturally occur for decades or even centuries.

The startup is currently hiring for remote research positions, indicating that it has secured some financial backing, although the amount of funding raised from outside investors remains undisclosed. Knoop, who is stepping away from his day-to-day work at Zapier to focus on Ndea, will remain a member of Zapier's board.

Ndea's emergence marks a significant shift in the AI research landscape, as high-profile researchers increasingly leave big tech companies to establish independent AI labs. Chollet's departure from Google last November follows in the footsteps of other prominent AI researchers, such as Ilya Sutskever, who founded Safe Superintelligence, and Fei-Fei Li, who heads World Labs. This trend suggests a growing desire among top AI talent to pursue more innovative and ambitious projects outside the constraints of large corporations.

The AI community is likely to closely follow Ndea's progress, given the startup's bold ambitions and the expertise of its founders. As the race to develop AGI continues, Ndea's unique approach and focus on program synthesis may prove to be a crucial differentiator in the pursuit of this elusive goal.

With Ndea, Chollet and Knoop are assembling a team of top program synthesis experts, aiming to create AGI that can invent, adapt, and innovate. As the startup navigates the complex and challenging landscape of AI research, its success could have far-reaching implications for the future of artificial intelligence and its potential to transform various industries and aspects of our lives.