rekursiv.ai
YC S26San Francisco, US · Founded 2026 · 5 employees · 2 known investors
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Rekursiv.ai builds autonomous systems of AI models that act as "AI Scientists," forming hypotheses, designing and running experiments, and discovering new knowledge such as novel machine learning algorithms. The company targets research and AI development, aiming to scale automated scientific discovery.
Also known as rekursiv
AI & Machine LearningDeep TechEnterprise SoftwareFuture of WorkArtificial IntelligenceDeep LearningMachine LearningUnited States of AmericaAmerica / CanadaPartly Remote
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S26)
rekursiv.ai was founded in 2026 by Joshua Dillon and Dan Kondratyuk.
JD

Joshua DillonCo-FounderJoshua Dillon held research scientist roles at Google, DeepMind, and Luma AI spanning 14 years, where he contributed to foundational model pre-training and led development of TensorFlow Probability. He is now co-founder of rekursiv.ai, which focuses on automating machine learning research processes.
DK

Dan KondratyukCo-Founder, Head of EngineeringDan Kondratyuk worked as a researcher at Google and Luma AI for a combined seven years, where he contributed to video generation models and led work on world models. He is now co-founder of rekursiv.ai, which focuses on automating machine learning research workflows.
Investors · 2
The YC application· Summer 2026 batch
Alumni Q&A
- What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?
- The founders argue that AI research is limited by the small number of human experts who can generate and test ideas, since experiments are slow and mostly fail. Their thesis is that progress is gated by the rate of idea generation and testing rather than by compute or data, so automating the hypothesize-experiment-learn loop could compound discoveries faster. The team has around 30 years of combined ML research experience at Google, DeepMind, and Luma AI, and built a system that ran this loop autonomously, shortening the time between forming an idea and evaluating it.
- What is your long-term vision? If you truly succeed, what will be different about the world?
- The founders aim to build autonomous AI scientists and scale them from one to millions running the scientific method in parallel, with each new method making subsequent research faster and cheaper. They intend to start with machine learning research because it is closest to their expertise and can accelerate other fields.
Summarized from the founders' answers on their Y Combinator profile.
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Companies working in the same space as rekursiv.ai.
Legal entities · 1
corporate structurerekursiv.ai, Inc.
In the news
Frequently asked questions
- What does rekursiv.ai do?
- Rekursiv.ai builds autonomous systems of AI models that act as "AI Scientists," forming hypotheses, designing and running experiments, and discovering new knowledge such as novel machine learning algorithms. The company targets research and AI development, aiming to scale automated scientific discovery.
- Who founded rekursiv.ai?
- rekursiv.ai was founded by Joshua Dillon, Dan Kondratyuk in 2026.
- Who are rekursiv.ai's investors?
- rekursiv.ai's investors include Vela Partners, Y Combinator.
- Where is rekursiv.ai headquartered?
- rekursiv.ai is headquartered in San Francisco, US.







