A new AI lab called Flapping Airplanes launched yesterday, and a Sequoia partner has an interesting take on why they stand out.

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Flapping Airplanes, a new AI lab, launched with $180 million in seed funding to explore less data-intensive approaches to training large models. Sequoia partner David Cahn highlights their research-first paradigm as a departure from the industry's dominant scaling approach, arguing for long-term research breakthroughs (5-10 years) over short-term compute buildouts. This represents a strategic shift from dedicating maximum resources to scaling existing LLMs toward exploring alternative paths to AGI through fundamental research.

Flapping Airplanes and the promise of research-driven AI