Tian Yuandong
Yuandong Tian is a researcher and entrepreneur specializing in reinforcement learning, large language model efficiency, and reasoning. He is a co-founder of Recursive Superintelligence Inc. and previously served as a Research Scientist Director at Meta FAIR, where he led projects including OpenGo, StreamingLLM, and GaLore. He earned his Ph.D. from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and has received honors including the ICCV Marr Prize Honorable Mention and an ICML Outstanding Paper Honorable Mention.
“This company's purpose is to find a method for AI to self-evolve and self-iterate. To find new paradigms, new models, new training logic, and thereby obtain better AI.”
Source→“Co-founder of Recursive Super Intelligence. Former principal researcher at Meta FAIR. Known for OpenGo (beat Korean professionals 20-0), work on efficiency of large models, Grokking, and theoretical understanding of neural networks.”
Source→“I used GPT-5 to co-author a paper — after finishing, I realized the model was already basically strong enough that I didn't need to hire a research assistant. Many ideas and approaches could be realized purely through dialogue with the model. This was when I thought: maybe in 5 years I'll be replaced. Rather than be replaced, I'll start a company.”
Source→“From their blog you can glimpse some of their technical direction. My rough guess is that they emphasize maintaining a good memory system for the auto-research agent. Tian Yuandong himself is actually quite supportive of Science of AI. I do have a sense of crisis — if their route eventually becomes similar to mine, it will definitely be Tian Yuandong doing it.”
Source→“"He thinks it's very important to explain AI — to make AI truly a science. Like the progression from Tycho Brahe to Kepler to Newton, he believes AI will go through this too." [00:37:35]”
Source→AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.