# Tim Shi

> Tim Shi is the co-founder and former CTO of Cresta, the AI platform for contact centers that grew to over $100M ARR and raised $401M from Sequoia, a16z, and Greylock. A Tsinghua CS graduate who did early AI research at OpenAI alongside Andrej Karpathy — including the 'World of Bits' paper on web-based reinforcement learning agents — he co-founded Cresta in 2017 with Zayd Enam after both dropped out of Stanford's AI PhD program. In 2025, he co-founded Recursive Superintelligence, which emerged from stealth with $650M at a $4.65B valuation to build self-improving AI systems.

- **Role:** Co-Founder at Recursive Superintelligence
- **Organizations:** Recursive Superintelligence, Cresta, OpenAI, Dropbox, DJI Research
- **Nationality:** Chinese-American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, Tsinghua University, Exchange Program, MIT, PhD Candidate, Artificial Intelligence (dropped out), Stanford University
- **Known for:** Co-authored 'World of Bits' (ICML 2017) — a foundational paper on web-based reinforcement learning agents alongside Andrej Karpathy, Early team member at OpenAI, contributing to research that preceded reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), Co-founded Cresta in 2017 and served as CTO, scaling it to 450+ employees and $100M+ ARR

## Career timeline

- **2011-2015** — BS in Computer Science at Tsinghua University; exchange at MIT in 2014
- **2015-2017** — PhD candidate in AI at Stanford University; co-founded Incepto House with housemates including Andrej Karpathy
- **2015 (summer)** — Software Engineering intern at Dropbox, focusing on machine learning for large-scale photo curation
- **2016 (summer)** — Deep Learning Research intern at DJI Research
- **2017 (Jan-Dec)** — Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI; co-authored 'World of Bits' paper with Andrej Karpathy and Percy Liang
- **2017 (Oct)** — Dropped out of Stanford PhD program and co-founded Cresta with Zayd Enam, Sebastian Thrun, and Andre Esteva
- **2019** — Cresta launched GPT-powered suggestions in enterprise software — one of the earliest GenAI deployments in enterprise
- **2020** — Cresta launched publicly with $21M in funding; served Fortune 500 clients including United Airlines, US Bank, Verizon
- **2021** — Forbes profiled Cresta; company raised $50M Series B
- **2022 (Jun)** — Tim Shi began angel investing in startups alongside Cresta duties
- **2024 (Nov)** — Cresta closed $125M Series D at over $100M ARR, backed by World Innovation Lab, QIA, Accenture, a16z, Greylock, Sequoia
- **2025** — Co-founded Recursive Superintelligence with Richard Socher, Tim Rocktaschel, Jeff Clune, Josh Tobin, and others
- **2026 (May)** — Recursive Superintelligence emerged from stealth with $650M raise at $4.65B valuation, led by GV, Greycroft, Nvidia, and AMD Ventures

## Achievements

- Co-authored 'World of Bits' (ICML 2017) — a foundational paper on web-based reinforcement learning agents alongside Andrej Karpathy
- Early team member at OpenAI, contributing to research that preceded reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)
- Co-founded Cresta in 2017 and served as CTO, scaling it to 450+ employees and $100M+ ARR
- Cresta raised $401M total funding from Sequoia, a16z, Greylock, Tiger Global, and J.P. Morgan
- Holds multiple AI patents for contact center conversation technology
- Launched one of the earliest enterprise generative AI products (GPT-based suggestions) in 2019
- Co-founded Recursive Superintelligence in 2025, which raised $650M at a $4.65B valuation
- 2,100+ citations on Google Scholar; h-index of 9
- Published research on adversarial learning for neural dialogue (1,200+ citations)
- Named in Business Insider's list of former OpenAI employees who launched VC-backed AI startups

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — Recursive Superintelligence emerged from stealth with $650M funding at $4.65B valuation; backed by GV, Greycroft, Nvidia, AMD Ventures
- **2025** — Co-founded Recursive Superintelligence alongside Richard Socher (ex-Salesforce AI chief scientist), Tim Rocktaschel, Jeff Clune, and Josh Tobin
- **2024-11** — Cresta closed $125M Series D; company crossed $100M ARR milestone under Tim's CTO tenure

## Links

- Website: https://shi.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tianlinshi/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/timshi_ai
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tianlin.shi/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/tim-shi
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-22