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Why Cohere’s ex-AI research lead is betting against the scaling race

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That’s the bet Sara Hooker, Cohere’s former VP of AI Research and a Google Brain alumna, is taking with her new startup, Adaption Labs. She co-founded the company with fellow Cohere and Google veteran Sudip Roy, and it’s built on the idea that scaling LLMs has become an inefficient way to squeeze more performance out of AI models.  ...

I'm starting a new project. Working on what I consider to be the most important problem: building thinking machines that adapt and continuously learn. We have incredibly talent dense founding team + are hiring for engineering, ops, design. ...

In an interview with TechCrunch, Hooker says Adaption Labs is building AI systems that can continuously adapt and learn from their real-world experiences, and do so extremely efficiently. She declined to share details about the methods behind this approach or whether the company relies on LLMs or another architecture. ...

“We have a handful of frontier labs that determine this set of AI models that are served the same way to everyone, and they’re very expensive to adapt,” said Hooker. “And actually, I think that doesn’t need to be true anymore, and AI systems can very efficiently learn from an environment. Proving that will completely change the dynamics of who gets to control and shape AI, and really, who these models serve at the end of the day.” ...

Adaption Labs, by contrast, aims to find the next breakthrough and prove that learning from experience can be far cheaper. The startup was in talks to raise a $20 million to $40 million seed round earlier this fall, according to three investors who reviewed its pitch decks. They say the round has since closed, though the final amount is unclear.  ...

She also built a reputation for broadening access to AI research globally, hiring research talent from underrepresented regions such as Africa. While Adaption Labs will open a San Francisco office soon, Hooker says she plans to hire worldwide. ...

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/22/why-coheres-ex-ai-research-lead-is-betting-against-the-scaling-race/