Lead the product vision for innovative AI technologies, translating research into marketable products, and collaborating with cross-functional teams.
Inception creates the world’s fastest, most efficient AI models. Our Mercury model is the world’s fastest reasoning LLM and first commercially available diffusion LLM, delivering 5x greater speed and efficiency than today’s LLMs, with best-in-class quality.
We are the AI researchers and engineers behind such breakthrough AI technologies as diffusion models, flash attention, and DPO.
The Role
Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer and working closely with the founding team, this role provides an opportunity to define the product vision for technology that will reshape how humans interact with AI. As our first product management hire, you'll work directly with our founding team to translate breakthrough research into products that transform how millions of users work, create, and solve problems.
You'll be building products where foundational AI technologies and user needs are changing rapidly. This role requires someone comfortable driving innovation in uncharted territory, where the very nature of what's possible with AI is being redefined.
The ideal candidate is a data‑driven, customer‑centric product builder who operates comfortably at the intersection of advanced AI research and pragmatic product delivery. They have shipped 0→1 products, scaled 1→N, and are credible with highly technical teams. They bring strong judgment in fast‑changing environments, communicate crisply with executives and partners, and can translate subtle user needs into instant‑speed experiences.
Key Responsibilities
- Own end-to-end product lifecycle from strategy through launch and optimization
- Conduct user research and analyze performance metrics specific to AI model behaviors and emerging use cases
- Partner with founders to define the roadmap, identifying and prioritizing opportunities for product expansion, including new markets and features
- Lead cross‑functional execution with Research, Engineering, Infrastructure, Applied ML, Design, Developer Relations, Legal, Privacy, Security, and Go-to-Market teams.
- Build evaluation systems and live benchmarks to track and improve speed and quality in target use cases
- Translate research breakthroughs into product capabilities. Set performance targets that connect model capabilities to user needs.
- Partner with early customers to prove value in target use cases and convert pilots into repeatable product bets.
- Recruit and level up the product function. Establish rituals, evaluation standards, and working agreements with research and engineering.
Qualifications
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field (or equivalent experience)
- 5+ years of product management experience
- Track record of driving product initiatives in rapidly changing technical landscapes
- Comfortable reading and writing code: able to prototype, explore APIs, and work closely with engineering teams
- Graduate of a top Associate Product Manager (APM) program or equivalent training
Preferred Experience
- Background in scaling products from early stage to growth phase
- Experience conducting user research and interviews
- Deep knowledge of LLMs at the modeling or application layer
Why Join Inception
- Work with World-Class Talent: Collaborate with the inventors of diffusion models and leading AI researchers
- Shape Foundational Technology: Your decisions will influence how the next generation of AI products are built and used
- Immediate Impact: Join at the ground floor where your contributions directly shape product direction and company trajectory
Perks & Benefits
- Competitive salary and equity in a rapidly growing startup
- Flexible vacation and paid time off (PTO)
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Catered meals (breakfast, lunch, & dinner)
- Commuter subsidies
- A collaborative and inclusive culture
About Us
Inception creates the world’s fastest, most efficient AI models. Today’s autoregressive LLMs generate tokens sequentially, which makes them painfully slow and expensive. Inception’s diffusion-based LLMs (dLLMs) generate answers in parallel. They are 5x faster and more efficient, while delivering best-in-class quality.
Inception was co-founded by Stanford professor Stefano Ermon, who co-invented such breakthrough AI technologies as diffusion models, flash attention, and DPO, UCLA professor Aditya Grover, who co-invented node2vec, decision transformers, and d1 reasoning, and Cornell professor and Afresh co-founder Volodymyr Kuleshov, who co-invented MDLM and Block Diffusion.
We pioneered the application of diffusion to language, with world’s first (and only) commercially available dLLM, Mercury. We are currently deploying our large-scale diffusion LLMs at Fortune 500 companies. Diffusion is the technology behind today’s image and video AI, and we’re making it the standard for LLMs as well.
Our team includes engineers from Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Microsoft AI, and OpenAI. Based in Palo Alto, CA, we are backed by A-list venture capitalists, including Menlo Ventures, Mayfield, M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund), Snowflake Ventures, Databricks, and Innovation Endeavors, and by tech luminaries such as Andrew Ng, Andrej Karpathy, and Eric Schmidt.
If you are talented, innovative, and ambitious, come help us invent the future of AI.
We are an equal opportunity employer and encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply.
Top Skills
AI
APIs
Llm
Machine Learning
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