Recursive launches Flint, a laptop coding model it says was largely built by AI

Recursive, an AI startup founded last year, is starting to live up to its name. The company, which is trying to build AI that can improve itself, released its first model, Flint, on Wednesday. Flint is a free coding model that can run on a laptop and was built largely with the help of AI.

Recursive’s automated research system, which it calls the Eureka Machine, helped with nearly every step of Flint’s development, the company says. That let a small team build the model from scratch in under four months.

Flint is an early public test of recursive self-improvement: the idea that AI can build better AI, which in turn builds even better AI. It’s also one of the most debated ideas in the industry. Some researchers fear that AI improving itself could slip out of human control. For now, Recursive’s version is more limited: an AI research assistant overseen by people that produced a model small enough for a laptop.

The company emerged from stealth in May with $650 million in funding at a $4.65 billion valuation, from backers including GV, Nvidia, and AMD Ventures. Recursive is led by CEO Richard Socher, Salesforce’s former chief scientist.

Because Flint runs on a user’s own computer rather than a company’s cloud servers, developers can use it offline, keep their code private, and avoid the usage fees that AI cloud services charge based on how much text the model processes. The model is free to download on Hugging Face, the popular site for sharing AI models, under the Apache 2.0 license, an open-source license that allows free use and modification.