US AI hotshot OpenAI took the world by storm when it unleashed its ChatGPT chatbot in November 2022 — triggering an investor race that saw more than $25bn worth of VC funding funnelled into generative AI in 2023, according to Dealroom data; that figure is set to be surpassed in 2024, based on the current direction of funding.
The San Francisco-based company founded in 2015 has grown to nearly 3,000 employees, according to LinkedIn, and a valuation of $80bn.
On top of that, it’s also turned into something of a founder factory, with a group of employees carving their own path as entrepreneurs here in Europe. Sifted selected four alumni who’ve founded new startups in the region after leaving the company: from autonomous factories to a robot that can cook your breakfast. We didn’t include founders who held internship positions or worked as freelancers at OpenAI and then went on to start their own companies, of which there are several.
Sifted reached out to each founder for further information, but not all of them responded. If we’ve missed any OpenAI alumni who’ve gone on to become founders in Europe, please get in touch at miriam@sifted.eu.
Jonas Schneider — Daedalus
Role at OpenAI: Schneider was one of the first engineers at OpenAI, where he worked as a tech lead between April 2016 and August 2019. He cofounded and led software engineering for the company’s robotics team, which trained a human-like robot hand to solve a Rubik’s cube and to manipulate other objects, among other things.
New venture: A few months after Schneider left OpenAI he started Daedalus, a startup building autonomous factories that can be used to manufacture precision parts for anything from medical devices to rocket engines. It raised a $21m Series A in February 2024.
Margaret Jennings — Kindo AI
Role at OpenAI: Jennings had a six month stint at OpenAI where she focused on applied AI — bringing the tech out of the lab and into the real world.
New venture: Jennings left OpenAI in January 2023, and a month later cofounded Kindo, an AI productivity platform that helps organisations safely adopt and manage AI across their workforce. This year Jennings pivoted to operator life joining French AI poster child Mistral as head of product.
Stanislas Polu — Dust
Role at OpenAI: Polu worked as a research engineer at OpenAI between September 2019 and September 2022. He researched the mathematical reasoning capabilities of large language models (in particular, in the context of formal mathematics.)
New venture: Shortly after leaving OpenAI Polu cofounded Dust, an agent management system which allows employees to define and operate specialised AI assistants to help them with their day to day jobs. The company raised €15m in July this year.
Polu cofounded Dust with Gabriel Hubert, with whom he previously cofounded TOTEMs (formerly known as Nitrogram) — a marketing and social media engagement platform — in 2010. The company was acquired by Stripe in February 2015.
Shariq Hashme — Prosper
Role at OpenAI: Hashme was a member of OpenAI’s technical staff from January 2017 until September 2017. He worked primarily on the company’s DotA project, where a team built AI which taught itself to beat human teams in online game Dota 2. Hashme ran experiments on reinforcement learning (RL) ideas and developed the interface to the game.
New venture: Hashme cofounded a robotics company, Prosper, in 2020. Its first product is a robot called Alfie — a ‘helper’ that cooks your breakfast, makes your bed and washes your clothes. The company is primarily self-funded, though it raised capital from investors such as Simon Last, cofounder at Notion and Alexandr Wang, cofounder and CEO of Scale AI (where Hashme was a software engineer before founding Prosper).
