NeoCognition, an AI research laboratory, has announced the completion of a $40 million seed funding round, led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst Ventures, with participation from Vista Equity Partners. According to Odaily, angel investors include Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica.
Based in Palo Alto, California, NeoCognition was founded by Ohio State University Associate Professor Yu Su, along with Xiang Deng and Yu Gu. The company focuses on improving the reliability of AI agents by enabling them to build domain-specific 'world models' for practical use, rather than relying solely on general pre-trained models. Currently targeting enterprise clients, NeoCognition plans to integrate sustainably optimized AI agents into SaaS products, although no public product has been released yet.