AI Pioneer and Keras Creator Francois Chollet Departs Google After Ten Years
Francois Chollet, the developer behind the widely used Keras AI framework, is leaving Google to start a new company. He hands over leadership of Keras while continuing to advocate for human-like reasoning in artificial intelligence.
AI pioneer Francois Chollet leaves Google after nearly ten years to start a new company with a friend. The 34-year-old developer expresses deep gratitude for his time at the tech giant, noting that deep learning transforms from a niche academic topic to a massive industry during his tenure. While he keeps the details of his new venture mostly private, his departure marks a significant shift in the AI landscape.
Chollet is best known as the creator of Keras, an open source API that boasts over two million users and powers major tech products like Waymo's self-driving cars and recommendation engines on YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify. He is also the mind behind the ARC-AGI benchmark and the $1 million ARC Prize competition, which challenges researchers to develop AI capable of novel reasoning. Machine learning engineer Jeff Carpenter takes over as team lead for Keras, though Chollet plans to remain involved with the project from the outside.
Unlike many major AI labs that focus on feeding massive amounts of data and compute to models, Chollet argues this approach fails to achieve true human-level intelligence. Instead, he advocates for methods like neuro-symbolic AI that enable models to reason in more human-like ways. Recognized by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in AI, Chollet envisions artificial general intelligence ultimately serving as a super-competent scientist to advance human knowledge.