Recursive
Recursive builds an automated AI research system that recursively proposes, implements, and validates experiments to advance AI capabilities. Headquartered in San Francisco and London, the pre-revenue company is venture-funded ($650M raised) to expand from AI into physics, chemistry, and biology.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2025
- HeadquartersLondon, United Kingdom
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Recursive does
Recursive (Recursive Superintelligence, Inc.) is a private, venture-backed AI research company building an automated, recursively self-improving system that runs the full AI research and development loop: the system proposes ideas, implements them, executes experiments, validates results (including reward-hack detection), retains context from prior runs, and selects the next experiment across many parallel threads over long horizons. The company was founded in December 2025 by former Salesforce Chief Scientist Richard Socher and UCL Professor Tim Rocktäschel, alongside co-founders drawn from OpenAI, DeepMind, Google, Meta, and Salesforce (Jeff Clune, Josh Tobin, Tim Shi, Peter Norvig, and others), and operates from offices in San Francisco and London. Its core technology draws on open-ended algorithms, quality diversity, AI-generating algorithms, self-improving coding agents, and automated red teaming; in June 2026 it published 'First Steps Toward Automated AI Research,' reporting state-of-the-art results on three benchmarks (NanoChat Autoresearch validation BPB 0.9109 vs prior 0.9372, NanoGPT Speedrun 77.5s vs 79.7s, SOL-ExecBench mean SOL 0.754 vs prior 0.699) and open-sourcing artifacts on GitHub.
The company is pre-revenue with no commercial product, pricing, or customers as of June 2026; its near-term go-to-market is described as research-led and community-led, leaning on long-form technical blog posts, open-source artifacts, and earned media to build credibility and recruit senior research engineers. Revenue mechanics are not yet defined beyond a planned subscription/recurring model, with founders explicitly stating that commercial products will ship 'within quarters rather than years.' Capital is the primary enabler: Recursive raised $500M in April 2026 at a $4B pre-money valuation led by GV with Nvidia participation, expanded the round to $650M at a $4.65B post-money valuation in May 2026 co-led with Greycroft, and added SUI Group Holdings ($3M), Karatage Opportunities, and a reportedly disclosed OpenAI investment, with the round flagged as oversubscribed and potentially reaching $1B. The intended customer base is initially AI research labs and frontier model developers, with a stated longer-term expansion into physics, chemistry, and pre-clinical biology research organizations.
Recursive firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Recursive
- Legal name
- Recursive Superintelligence, Inc.
- Website
- https://recursive.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2025
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Recursive builds an automated AI research system that recursively proposes, implements, and validates experiments to advance AI capabilities. Headquartered in San Francisco and London, the pre-revenue company is venture-funded ($650M raised) to expand from AI into physics, chemistry, and biology.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Recursive industry classification
Industry- Product category
- AI Research Automation Platform
- NAICS
- Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)
- akta.pro primary industry
- AI Compiler, Runtime & Kernel Optimization Software (CUDA/ROCm/XLA, graph compilers) (HDAAAAAI)
Keywords
Where Recursive is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- London
- HQ country
- United Kingdom
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices2 records
Markets served
Recursive business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Pre-revenue / R&D stage: No commercial product or published revenue stream as of the source date. The company has no public product and has not published research outputs (aside from a June 2026 results post). Plans to ship products within quarters rather than years. Founder Richard Socher separately disclosed that his other venture You.com generates revenue in the high double-digit millions, but this is not Recursive revenue.
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels5 records
Recursive product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Recursive builds an automated AI research system that recursively proposes ideas, implements them, runs experiments, validates results against reward hacks and variance, and uses prior context to choose the next experiment across many parallel threads. The system is built on open-ended algorithms, quality diversity, AI-generating algorithms, self-improving coding agents, and automated red teaming, and is initially applied to AI research itself (training recipes, model architectures, GPU kernels) with planned expansion to physics, chemistry, and pre-clinical biology.
Product overview
Recursive (Recursive Superintelligence, Inc.) is a single-product AI research company — there is no platform-plus-modules commercial offering as of June 2026. Its core offering is the Recursive Automated AI Research System, an internally built, recursively self-improving AI platform whose mission (per recursive.com) is to "automate knowledge discovery" by applying open-ended algorithms to AI research first and then to other scientific disciplines. The company's first externally visible deliverable is the "First Steps Toward Automated AI Research" research article, which benchmarks that system on three targets (NanoChat Autoresearch, NanoGPT Speedrun, SOL-ExecBench) and accompanies open-source artifacts released on GitHub; no public API, SDK, or consumer product has shipped.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Recursive Automated AI Research System An automated AI research system that recursively proposes ideas, implements them, runs experiments, validates results (including reward-hack detection), and chooses the next experiment across many threads over long horizons. Designed to apply open-ended algorithms to AI research first and ultimately to physics, chemistry, and pre-clinical biology. Status as of June 2026: research stage with no commercial product GA.
- First Steps Toward Automated AI Research A research release describing Recursive's automated AI research system's state-of-the-art results on three benchmarks, accompanied by open-sourced code, configs, and artifacts published on GitHub for community inspection and reuse.
Quantifiable outcome
- ~1.3x training speedup on NanoChat Autoresearch (0.9109 vs 0.9372 validation BPB)
- +4 more outcomes
Companies that use Recursive
Customer profileSegments2 records
Ideal customer profiles2 records
Recursive technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
AI capability7 records
Feature4 records
Recursive partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
One partnership is on record.
- UCL (University College London)core research affiliationCo-founder Tim Rocktäschel is a UCL professor; UCL highlighted Recursive's $500M+ raise as one of the largest-ever European AI funding rounds tied to its research community.
Scale indicators6 records
Recent moves5 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Recursive competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- OpenAI: Frontier AI lab reportedly a minority financial backer of Recursive while also pursuing internal automated research and self-improvement capabilities. The most direct competitor on the recursive self-improvement thesis, with multi-order-of-magnitude greater capital and headcount.
- Anthropic: Frontier AI lab pursuing automated AI research and frontier model development. Competes with Recursive for senior research talent and is comparable on the recursive self-improvement / frontier-capability axis, though with a commercial product focus.
- Google DeepMind: Frontier AI research division of Alphabet pursuing automated AI research, recursive self-improvement, and AI-for-science (AlphaFold, AlphaTensor). Operates at much larger scale than Recursive and is also a backer via GV; competes for the same senior research talent.
- xAI: Elon Musk's frontier AI lab pursuing AGI with massive compute scale. Comparable on the recursive self-improvement / superintelligence thesis and as a competitor for senior research talent, though with a very different operational model.
- Meta AI (FAIR): Meta's Fundamental AI Research lab, founded by Yann LeCun, pursuing automated research and open-source frontier model development. Directly comparable as a peer on automated research methodology and as a source of Recursive's co-founder talent pool.
Direct peers
- Sakana AI: Tokyo-based AI research lab founded by ex-Google researchers Llion Jones and David Ha, focused on AI-driven automated research and model merging. Closest direct peer to Recursive on automated AI R&D methodology and on founder pedigree from frontier labs.
Emerging players
- Mistral AI: Paris-based frontier AI lab pursuing open-weight foundation models. Comparable as a well-funded European-headquartered AI research startup pursuing frontier capabilities, though focused on model products rather than automated research methodology.
- Hugging Face: Open-source AI platform hosting model and dataset repositories. Comparable on the community-led, open-source research-artifact distribution model that Recursive uses, and on serving the AI research community as the primary user base.
- Ineffable Intelligence: UCL-affiliated frontier AI startup that, together with Recursive, was highlighted by UCL as part of one of Europe's largest-ever AI funding rounds ($1.6B combined). Closest European peer on academic lineage, geography, and stage.
Others
- Cresta AI: Enterprise AI company co-founded by several of Recursive's co-founders (referenced in Recursive's website logo strip). Comparable on founder lineage and on the broader thesis of AI automating knowledge work, though focused on contact-center applications rather than automated AI R&D.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks7 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Recursive social profiles
Digital presenceRecursive financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Recursive leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles6 records
Recursive funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds1 record
Investors11 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Recursive M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Recursive
What does Recursive do?
Recursive builds an automated AI research system that recursively proposes ideas, implements them, runs experiments, validates results against reward hacks and variance, and uses prior context to choose the next experiment across many parallel threads. The system is built on open-ended algorithms, quality diversity, AI-generating algorithms, self-improving coding agents, and automated red teaming, and is initially applied to AI research itself (training recipes, model architectures, GPU kernels) with planned expansion to physics, chemistry, and pre-clinical biology.
Is Recursive a public or private company?
Recursive is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Recursive founded?
Recursive was founded in 2025. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Recursive based?
Recursive is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, in the Europe region.
How does Recursive make money?
One revenue line is on record: pre-revenue / R&D stage.
Who are Recursive's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI and Meta AI (FAIR). Sakana AI is listed as a direct peer. Emerging players are Mistral AI, Hugging Face and Ineffable Intelligence. Cresta AI is listed as an others.
Does Recursive have an API?
No public API is recorded for Recursive.
What industry is Recursive in?
Recursive's product category is AI Research Automation Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAAAAAI, AI Compiler, Runtime & Kernel Optimization Software (CUDA/ROCm/XLA, graph compilers). Its NAICS code is 54151 and its SIC code is 7371.