Torenberg's under-25 AI watchlist called out for X bias; Stanford dropout acquihired by OpenAI
RylanSchaeffer · x · 2026-10-18
Erik Torenberg published a list of AI people worth watching under 25, mostly OpenAI- and a16z-affiliated young researchers and founders, including Will DePue (ex-OpenAI Sora/post-training), Henry Williams (OpenAI Strategic Futures), Sara Du, Reducto CEO Adit, and Riley Walz.
Rylan Schaeffer pushback: the list is heavily biased toward visibility on X. He adds one notable omission — a Stanford sophomore dropout who built a mech-interp-for-capabilities startup, pivoted to pretraining architecture-optimizer co-design, and had his team acquihired by OpenAI.
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