Sutton Foundes New Company Betting on Reinforcement Learning
ShakeelHashim · x · 2026-07-14
Reinforcement learning pioneer Richard Sutton publicly announced that he and Khurram Javed have spun out from Keen Systems to found a new startup, Oak Lab.
He emphasized that the new company still believes in reinforcement learning, arguing that intelligence arises from and is maintained by "runtime experience". He also bluntly stated that current deep learning methods are "weak and inefficient," requiring a fundamental rethink rather than just continued fine-tuning.
Related event: Turing Award Winner Sutton Leaves Keen to Found OakLab(10 posts)→
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