AI research lab NeoCognition lands $40M seed to build agents that learn like humans

NeoCognition, a startup spun out of Ohio State University by AI researcher Yu Su, has raised $40M in seed funding to build self-learning AI agents that can specialize in any domain. The round was co-led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst Ventures, with participation from Vista Equity Partners and notable angels including Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica. Su argues current AI agents only succeed at tasks about 50% of the time due to lack of consistency, and NeoCognition aims to fix this by developing agents that autonomously build world models for specific domains — mirroring how humans rapidly specialize. The company plans to sell its agent systems to enterprises and SaaS companies, and currently employs about 15 people, mostly PhDs.