Recursive, a new artificial intelligence research company founded by former leaders of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Salesforce AI, and Uber AI, announced that it is coming out of stealth with a mission to develop self-improving AI systems that can run experiments to safely improve themselves through automated scientific discovery.
The company revealed that it has raised $650 million in a heavily oversubscribed funding round at a valuation of $4.65 billion. The funding round was led by GV and Greycroft, with participation from AMD Ventures and NVIDIA.
According to Recursive, the company believes the fastest path to superintelligence comes from AI systems that can recursively improve themselves through open-ended algorithms designed to generate continuous innovation. The company believes that human intelligence emerged through an open-ended evolutionary and cultural process that continually built on previous discoveries.
Recursive said that while current scientific discoveries in artificial intelligence are still primarily driven by human researchers, the company foresees a broader trend in machine learning where hand-designed methods are replaced by AI-driven approaches due to increases in computing and data. The company plans to first focus on AI systems that improve AI itself, before eventually expanding its capabilities to broader scientific fields.
The company emphasized that safety remains its top priority in developing AI systems that recursively self-improve. Recursive said it aims to maximize the benefits of advanced AI systems for humanity while mitigating the associated risks.
Recursive’s founding team includes researchers and entrepreneurs who previously helped found AI research organizations at Salesforce and Uber, and led teams at OpenAI, DeepMind, Google Brain, and Meta. The company also noted that several of its team members have previously founded successful startups, including companies that have achieved unicorn status and companies that have been acquired by major technology companies such as Salesforce, Meta, and Uber.
The company says its team, currently comprised of more than 25 employees and growing, has contributed to advances across several AI research areas, including open-ended algorithms, quality diversity algorithms, AI-generated algorithms, self-improving coding agents, automated red teaming, prompt engineering automation, foundational world models, vision transformers, search augmented generation, and AI scientist systems.
Recursive said it is actively recruiting researchers and engineers interested in advancing AI systems that are secure, open-ended, and recursively self-improving. The company currently operates offices in San Francisco and London.
