Jerry Tworek, a former OpenAI researcher, has unveiled his new AI lab, "Core Automation," with the goal of building "the most automated AI lab in the world," starting by automating its own research.
Instead of chasing ever-larger models trained on more data, Core Automation says it's developing new learning algorithms that go beyond pre-training and reinforcement learning, plus architectures designed to scale better than transformers.
The team pulls together experts in frontier models, optimization, and systems engineering. The vision is small teams with capable AI agents doing work that used to take entire organizations.
Tworek left OpenAI in January 2026 after seven years, saying this kind of fundamental research was no longer possible there. In his view, deep learning research "is done."
Core Automation joins a growing list of so-called Neo Labs founded by OpenAI alumni and others, including Thinking Machines Lab (led by the former CTO) and Safe Superintelligence (led by the former chief scientist). They all share the belief that real progress in AI now depends on fundamentally new approaches.
