WorkJuly 13, 2026via The Decoder
Turing Award winner Rich Sutton founds Oak Lab to build AI agents that learn on their own
Why it matters
A foundational AI researcher and 2024 Turing Award winner is pivoting to entrepreneurship with a new startup focused on continuous learning agents—signaling potential dissatisfaction with current deep learning paradigms and attracting attention to reinforcement learning's next chapter.
Key signals
- Richard Sutton founded Oak Lab in Toronto
- Sutton won 2024 Turing Award
- Co-founder of modern reinforcement learning
- Focus: AI agents that learn continuously from environment
- Sutton's critique: current deep learning methods are 'weak and inefficient'
The hook
Turing Award winner Rich Sutton just left academia to build what he calls the fix for 'weak and inefficient' deep learning.
Richard Sutton, 2024 Turing Award winner and co-founder of modern reinforcement learning, has launched a new startup called Oak Lab in Toronto. He calls current deep learning methods "weak and inefficient" and wants to build AI agents that learn continuously from their environment.