Before their startup had customers, a business plan or even a formal name, former Google AI researchers Niki Parmar and Ashish Vaswani were fielding interest from investors eager to back the next big thing in artificial intelligence.
At Google, Ms. Parmar and Mr. Vaswani were among the co-authors of a seminal 2017 paper that helped pave the way for the boom in so-called generative AI. Earlier this year, only weeks after striking out on their own, they raised funds that valued their fledgling company—now called Essential AI—at around $50 million, people familiar with the company said.