Austin, Texas – In the brave new world of artificial intelligence, talent is new money, and businesses are in a race desperate to find it. While universities work to unleash computer science alumni, Austin has emerged a new kind of school to meet the insatiable demand, gauntlet AI.
Gauntlet AI bills itself as an elite training program. This is a high-stakes, highly rewarding process designed to fake “AI-First” engineers and builders in a few weeks.
“We're closer to bootcamp training for Navy Seals than we do in schools,” said Ash Tilawat, Head of Product and Learning. “We take the smartest people in the world. We take them to the same place for 1000 hours in ten weeks and visit them all in buildings with AI.”
Austen Allred, co-founder and CEO of Gauntlet AI, says it's not an exaggeration when he claims he's looking for the smartest engineer in the world. The selection process is very strict.
“We accept approximately 2% of applicants,” Allred explained. “We accept RAW intelligence above the 98th percentile and coding capabilities of the 95th percentile before starting with the gauntlet.”
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Admission is not paid in dollars. There is no tuition fee. Instead, the cost is an absolute, undivided note of the student.
“It's pretty tough, but it's energizing and I love doing this,” said Natalie Smith, “one of the Gauntlet Challengers.”
With that passion in biotechnology and space, Smith recently conveyed her love for Bioscience to complete one of the program's challenges. Her team was tasked with building a project called “Geno.”
“It's a tool that allows people to upload genomic data and get statistical analysis of the likelihood that they have different types of cancer,” Smith explained.
Incredibly, her team built AI-powered tools in just a week.
The ultimate award awaits at the end of the harsh 10-week gauntlet is a guaranteed job offer with a starting salary of at least $200,000. And recruiting partners are already lined up to recruit challengers like Natalie.
“We're looking forward to seeing you in the future,” said Gauntlet's COO Brett Johnson. “That's why Calvana is an employment partner. Here in Austin, we have people like functional health and more. We have a trilogy organization. We're just around the corner. We're getting bigger and bigger in the Austin tech community and we're trying to double that.”
In a world of desperate efforts to skilled engineers, Gauntlet AI doesn't just train people. It manufactures a highly talented pipeline that we believe will empower the next wave of technological innovation.
