Troy native honored with prestigious fellowship for AI work

TROY — A Troy native was recently named one of 20 recipients of the prestigious Thiel Fellowship.

Launched in 2011, the fellowship encourages talented young people with big ideas to start companies instead of attending college.

Quinn Favret grew up in Troy and graduated from Troy High School in 2018. He and his startup company, Tavus, were recognized.

“I was over the moon when I found out I was named by the fellowship,” said Favret. “It’s a group of scientists, businesspeople and leaders I really respect. I look up to so many of them. I was so honored.”

“In a world where conformity rules, these young founders are setting out to reimagine every industry they touch,” said Brian Rowen, the president of the Thiel Foundation. “No goal is too ambitious; this year’s class is innovating in fields as varied as energy production, genetic testing, AI and agriculture.”

During the two-year fellowship program, fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the Thiel Foundation’s network of technology founders, investors and scientists. The only requirement is that fellows pause their college enrollment and focus exclusively on building their technology or company.

Favret will join the previous 251 fellows. Alumni of the fellowship include the founders of companies such as Embark, Ethereum, Figma, Luminar and DoNotPay.

“More than a third of this year’s applicants never applied to college and instead are following their own path,” said Alex Handy, the director of the Thiel Fellowship. “Members of this year’s class are not preoccupied with chasing trends, whether in Silicon Valley or on TikTok. They are acting on concrete plans to improve the world around them.”

Favret started a company called Tavus, which uses artificial intelligence to generate personalized videos with the creator’s face and voice. This would allow the sender to create one video, but create several duplicates where each duplicate is automatically modified to change the video and audio so the speaker addresses a unique individual in each version.

“Tavus is a platform that creates realistic videos of you without you having to say a word,” he said. “We wanted to solve the problem of impersonal communication. It clones your voice, and so you can create one video and then modify it to say 1,000 different things.”

The company was started after Favret spent two years attending the University of Michigan. After leaving the university — at the time, he didn’t know whether it would be a temporary or permanent absence — he began his company, eventually working in Austin, Texas, and New York City.

“Tavus started two and half years ago,” he explained. “When I was at Michigan, I started working on my first company almost by accident. ... I connected with my current co-founder, who was at Google. He and I started working together and got along really well. We started sending out personalized videos to grow the company. We tried different methods, text blasts, videos and so forth. We stayed up one night sending out personalized videos, and we had this lightbulb moment. It was something that worked and that people need.”

Thiel Fellowship officials said that Tavus exemplifies the sort of projects they try to support.

“Young founders with radical ideas know universities will only hold them back. This is precisely why Quinn is following his own path,” said Handy. “With Tavus, Quinn is using artificial intelligence in ways previously limited to works of science fiction. He understands the potential of AI and has already changed how many industries communicate.”

He applied to the Thiel Fellowship because he thought their mission perfectly matched who he was and what he was trying to do.

“The Thiel Fellowship has been on my radar for some time,” said Favret. “They have highlighted founders of some great companies. When I dropped out of college, it seemed a natural group to connect with them, since their primary requirement is you drop out of college and then start something new.”

He believes that what sets Tavus and its staff apart is their ability to not only fill a need that is in the business community that no one else was trying to address, but to do so in a way that is fast moving and incredibly responsive.

“We have raised capital from some of the greatest firms in the world,” he said. “We were invited to a program at the Stanford School of Business. I think that the fact that makes Tavus successful is that we get things done quickly. If there’s something that needs to be fixed, it gets fixed quickly. If we need to make an adjustment or improvement, we do it quickly. … I also think our vision sets us apart. We are aiming to be what is called a ‘unicorn company,’ which is a startup valued at over $1 billion. We want to revolutionize brand outreach. I think it’s a product the world wants and needs.”