On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2024. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Mohammad ↗
In their words
it got to the point that we felt like this needs to be turned into a product and there's a huge opportunity but that was really hard to do as part of a big Corporation
when you think of design text is actually a core part of design it's kind of funny we start from text then we generate images but then images are not enough for visual communication
my advice is like don't lower the bar
Around the web ×2
Quick answers
Who is Mohammad Norouzi?
Co-founder and CEO of Ideogram, a Toronto text-to-image company. He was a senior staff research scientist at Google Brain, where he led Imagen and shared a NeurIPS 2022 Outstanding Paper Award, and did his PhD at the University of Toronto.
What did he say on the TechTO stage?
In a July 2024 fireside he described leaving Google with three co-workers to ship what a large company could not, opened with the disclaimer that Ideogram was not yet profitable, recounted a Sequoia pitch where his audio failed, and said the team refused to lower the hiring bar even while short an engineer.
What is Ideogram?
A generative-image platform founded in Toronto in December 2022 by Norouzi with William Chan, Chitwan Saharia and Jonathan Ho, all ex-Google. It launched in August 2023 with $16.5 million USD in seed funding and raised an $80 million USD Series A in February 2024.