Vendor Developing Self-Improving AI Signs $410M AWS Deal

Recursive SuperintelligenceA London-based startup developing continually self-improving AI has agreed to a $410 million compute deal with AWS.Recursive Superintelligence, which emerged from stealth in May with a valuation of $4.65 billion, has raised $650 million in investment to date and acknowledged that the agreement with AWS has absorbed most of its funding so far.While a more conventional route at this stage would be for a startup to increase its staff, Recursive says its approach is correct for a company focused on automating the development of its own product.The startup is focused on building AI that conducts its own experiments on how to safely improve itself, in an open-ended process of ongoing evolution. As such, it considers “agent count” to be more important than headcount.This ability to continually upgrade itself ultimately reduces the need for human input to the point where a closed loop forms, and the AI is limited only by the computing power it can access. That’s where the arrangement with AWS becomes important.Related:Samsung Agrees to Chip Deal With Broadcom“Self-improving AI creates a compounding demand for compute -- every research loop generates the next experiment. In just a few months, Recursive has produced results that outpaced years of community-driven optimization,” Jason Bennett, vice president, worldwide startups and venture capital at AWS, said in a statement. “AWS gives them the elasticity to run those loops in parallel at massive scale, and the reliability, security, and purpose-built compute to turn months of sequential research into days of parallel discovery.”The results Bennett refers to were published by Recursive and highlighted leading performance in fixed-budget large language model training, small-model training speed, and GPU kernel optimization.This success has also encouraged AWS and Recursive to co-develop infrastructure purpose-built for large-scale automated AI research that may be of use for other similarly focused AI companies in the future.“Recursive self-improving AI represents one of the biggest shifts ahead for humanity. The clearest path to superintelligence is to build AI that recursively improves itself,” co-founder and CEO Richard Socher said in a statement. “AI is code, and AI can code. If we can close that loop properly, we can automate the scientific method itself -- the same process that has driven humanity’s progress in discovery and invention for centuries.”Financial backers of the startup include GV (Google Ventures), Greycroft, AMD Ventures and Nvidia.About the AuthorContributing WriterGraham Hope has worked in automotive journalism in the U.K. for 26 years, including spells as editor of leading consumer news website and weekly Auto Express and respected buying guide CarBuyer.