# Robert Yang

> Robert Yang (Guangyu Robert Yang) is a computational neuroscientist turned AI founder who left a tenure-track professorship at MIT to build Fundamental Research Labs (formerly Altera), a company creating socially intelligent AI agents. Trained in physics at Peking University, with a PhD from NYU and postdoc at Columbia, Yang became a 2022 Searle Scholar before pivoting to the startup world in December 2023. His company made waves running 1,000 autonomous AI agents in Minecraft — watching them spontaneously develop religions, trade economies, and social hierarchies — and has since raised over $45M to bring that vision into enterprise productivity tools and beyond.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Fundamental Research Labs
- **Organizations:** Fundamental Research Labs, Altera, MIT, Columbia University, New York University, MetaConscious Group, Simons Society of Fellows
- **Nationality:** Chinese-American
- **Education:** BS in Physics, Peking University, PhD in Computational Neuroscience, New York University, Postdoctoral Fellowship, Columbia University (Center for Theoretical Neuroscience)
- **Known for:** 2022 Searle Scholar - prestigious $300,000 award for early-career biomedical researchers, Published landmark 2019 Nature Neuroscience paper on task representations in neural networks (755+ citations), Over 3,900 total academic citations with h-index of 23

## Career timeline

- **2008-2012** — Studied physics at Peking University, China
- **2013-2018** — PhD in computational neuroscience at New York University under Xiao-Jing Wang
- **2018-2021** — Postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Center for Theoretical Neuroscience; junior fellow at Simons Society of Fellows; intern at Google Brain
- **2021** — Joined MIT as Silverman Family Career Development Assistant Professor in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and EECS; Associate Investigator at McGovern Institute
- **2022** — Named 2022 Searle Scholar ($300,000 award for early-career biomedical researchers)
- **2023-12** — Left MIT tenure-track position to co-found Altera (later Fundamental Research Labs) in San Francisco with Andrew Ahn, Nico Christie, and Shuying Luo
- **2024-01** — Raised $2M pre-seed led by a16z SPEEDRUN; relocated company to San Francisco
- **2024-05** — Raised $9M seed round co-led by Eric Schmidt's First Spark Ventures and Patron (Riot Games alumni fund)
- **2024-09** — Launched Project Sid: deployed up to 1,000 autonomous AI agents in Minecraft, observing emergent civilization behaviors
- **2024-11** — Published Project Sid research paper (arxiv.org/abs/2411.00114); covered by MIT Technology Review
- **2025-08** — Raised $33M Series A led by Prosus with Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) participating; rebranded to Fundamental Research Labs; launched Fairies and Shortcut products

## Achievements

- 2022 Searle Scholar - prestigious $300,000 award for early-career biomedical researchers
- Published landmark 2019 Nature Neuroscience paper on task representations in neural networks (755+ citations)
- Over 3,900 total academic citations with h-index of 23
- Led Project Sid: first large-scale multi-agent AI simulation showing emergent civilization-level behaviors in 1,000-agent Minecraft environment
- Raised $45M+ total for Fundamental Research Labs from top investors including Prosus, a16z, Eric Schmidt, and Patrick Collison
- Shortcut AI product outperformed first-year analysts from top consulting firms in 89.1% of blind comparisons
- Silverman (1968) Family Career Development Assistant Professor at MIT - a named chair
- Associate Investigator at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research
- Junior Fellow at the Simons Society of Fellows

## Latest updates

- **2025-08** — Raised $33M Series A led by Prosus; participation from Stripe CEO Patrick Collison; rebranded company from Altera to Fundamental Research Labs
- **2025-08** — Launched Fairies (general-purpose consumer AI assistant) and Shortcut (spreadsheet-native autonomous analyst for financial modeling)
- **2024-11** — Published Project Sid paper - 1,000-agent Minecraft simulation paper published on arXiv; covered by MIT Technology Review, Tom's Guide, and Science Focus
- **2024-09** — Presented Project Sid: largest multi-agent AI social simulation to date, showing emergent civilization behaviors at 1,000-agent scale
- **2024-05** — Raised $9M seed round led by Eric Schmidt's First Spark Ventures and Patron; launched Minecraft AI companion agents

## Links

- Website: https://fundamentalresearchlabs.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-yang-41a83019
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/GuangyuRobert

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/robert-yang
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-13