Bret Taylor (former President of the Board at Twiter and currently co-CEO at Salesforce) and Clay Bavor (currently Vice President at Google Labs) announced today the launch of a new start-up devoted to applying Artificial intelligence to solve o solve some of the most important problems in business.
The startup is planned to begin operations next March and Bavor will leave Google Labs at the time to join the new company.
Taylor and Bavor knew each other when they both began their careers at Google twenty years ago in 2003.
“Rarely do you encounter a new technology so powerful that it feels inevitable that it will change the course of every industry. I remember feeling that way when I first used a web browser in high school, and then again when I first saw Steve Jobs demonstrate the iPhone in 2007. I have that same sense of excitement and inevitability about modern AI, especially given recent advances in large language models.
I could not be more excited to announce that Clay Bavor and I are going to create a new company to apply AI to solve some of the most important problems in business”…”We’re just getting started, but we’re excited to build an enduring company,” Bret Taylor says on his post on Linkedin.
CLay Bavor announced the new project and his departure from Google saying: “I started my first business in second grade, selling hard-to-find Japanese candies for a quarter each. Later, at 13, I started a website design company, which I ran through the end of high school. It was a thrill to have to figure everything out myself, to create something from nothing, and I’ve always felt it would be when, not if, I started my next company. After 18 wonderful years at Google, today is when, and I’m incredibly excited to share that I am cofounding that company with my longtime friend Bret Taylor.
Bret and I have known each other since our early days at Google, and I have always admired his keen product sense and entrepreneurial spirit, his technical chops, and, above all, his character and integrity. We share an obsession with recent advances in AI, and we’re excited to build a new company to apply AI to solve some of the most important problems in business.
I’ll be setting out with Bret on this next adventure in March, and will have more to share once we get started. Until then, I’ll be focusing on transitioning my teams and projects, and wrapping things up properly at Google.”
Two tech-creative heavy weights starting up together an independent AI project
Taylor Co-created Google Maps, Google Local, and the Google Maps API. Created Google’s developer product team and first developer conference, Google I/O and has a proven career as tech entreprenneur and in leading positions at some of the most reputed tech giants in the world such as Facebook (Chief Technology Officer) or Twitter (Chairman of the Board at the time Elon Musk finally purchased the company).
Bret Taylor has had a career, not only in the tech development side of the business but also in the managing side of the companies he has created or worked at.
He studied at Stanford University where he obtained a BS in Computer Science and then an MS in the same field.
Till now Clay Bavor has developped almost all his professional career at Google. He joined the company in 2005 as Associate Product Manager and 10 years later he was Vice President Product Management. In 2015 Bavor was appointed Vice President AI/VR and by November 2021 he took on the responsibility as Vice President Google labs, where he led the Starline Project.
“When I do depart next month, it will be with nothing but appreciation and gratitude. My time at Google – which is to say, my entire career – has been formative, and deeply meaningful to me. I learned how to work at Google, and I saw up close what excellence looks like. I had the opportunity to work on a myriad of important products and technologies. And I learned so much along the way, from my successes and failures alike.
Above all, it has been my amazing colleagues who have made my time at Google all that it has meant to me. From my first day, I had the good fortune to have had a series of steadfastly supportive managers, mentors, and sponsors – people who saw something in me, bet on me, and let me run. And I have had the privilege of spending my days working alongside so many spectacularly smart, endlessly interesting, and unfailingly kind colleagues, many of whom I have come to count among my closest friends.
My time at Google has been one of the great gifts of my life. For it, and to all of those who made that time so special, I am grateful beyond words.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Clay Bavor underscored in his post on Linkedin.
His strong tech profile has never killed Bavor’s creative side, on the contrary this has boosted some (not all) his artistic projects like his neural generated botanical prints or the Artifacial Intelligence.
Bavor Graduated magna cum laude at Princeton University where he obtained his BSE in Computer Science.
In his ‘lettuce days’ won with his classmate and friend Jesse Levinson, the Departmental Award for Best Computer Science thesis. They patented and sold to Apple technology they both had developed during their junior year at the Princeton University Research Department.
Image over the headline.- Clay Bavor (left) and Bret Taylor (right).
Related external links:
More on Clay Bavor’s personal art and science projects
Related Eastwind links (English edition):
AI features will begin rolling out on Google Search soon, Pichai announced today
Bard, Google’s alternative to Chat GPT, launched today for trusted testing
Nelly Kennedy will leave Google to become CMO at Volkswagen
Elon Musk is finally “moving to” Twitter
