The Math Legend Who Just Left Academia–For an AI Startup Run by a 24-Year-Old

Interesting, seems wsj does not allow archive.is through their paywall

That's an odd thing to say. She is 24 years old and has super impressive academic credentials. She raised almost 70 million which is a huge amount for any startup. The professor probably wants a change in his life and wants to work on something more exciting.

I wonder if this is like when Thinking Machines Corporation hired Richard Feynman mostly to get a little clout. They didn't have a lot for him to do, and he thought they were a bunch of naive kids with an idea that would never work in the real world but had a fat pocketbook. In the end he was able to mathematically prove that they could safely do a hardware optimization, but they didn't believe him and tried to overprovision instead, but late in the design they ran short of transistors and had to trust his math. It worked, but the machine was still mostly useless even when it did work properly.

Doubtful. I knew Ono as an undergrad at Wisconsin. He has far too much integrity for that.

He's always been involved in mentoring high schoolers, undergrads, and, of course, his own grad students. It's not surprising that he's working with a 24 year old.

He's a bundle of energy in math and sports and always looking for the new thing. Jumping in on a new project in a burgeoning field is very much his m.o.

I agree with you. Even if this start up fails, it's not like he can't return to academia.