Fundamental Research Labs Secures $33M for Diverse AI Agent Development
Fundamental Research Labs, an applied AI research company previously known as Altera, has announced a successful Series A funding round, securing $33 million. The investment was led by Prosus, with additional participation from Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison.
The company, founded by Dr. Robert Yang, a former faculty member at MIT, operates with an unconventional structure, pursuing multiple AI applications across diverse fields. While its seed funding phase saw it developing AI bots capable of playing Minecraft, Fundamental Research Labs has since expanded to include dedicated teams for games, prosumer applications, core research, and platform development. Dr. Yang articulated the company’s ambition to become a “historical” entity, diverging from typical startup models. Notably, the company is already generating revenue, charging users for its AI agents after a seven-day trial period.
Among its current offerings is Fairies, a general-purpose AI assistant designed for consumers. This application enables users to engage in conversational interactions with an AI bot, integrate various applications, and query information across the connected applications’ knowledge bases. Fairies can also schedule appointments on a user’s calendar and automate recurring tasks through workflow scheduling. Dr. Yang highlighted that this application serves as a testing ground for the company’s engineers to evaluate the capabilities of new AI models and platform technologies under development.
Another key product is Shortcut, an AI agent tailored for spreadsheet-based operations. Designed to emulate the functionality of Microsoft Excel, Shortcut assists analysts in creating financial models and performing in-depth analysis. The company positions Shortcut as a “junior analyst” capable of autonomous work, retaining extensive functionality for power users. Fundamental Research Labs also claims impressive performance for Shortcut, stating it has outperformed first-year analysts from leading firms like McKinsey and Goldman Sachs in financial modeling and analysis tasks. In blind evaluations, Shortcut reportedly achieved a success rate of 89.1% against human counterparts, even when humans were granted significantly more time.
Sandeep Bakshi, an investment partner at Prosus, expressed strong confidence in Fundamental Research Labs. “What stood out here is a small, highly mission-driven team focused on digital humans with actual use cases,” Bakshi stated, adding that products like Fairies and Shortcut are not mere demonstrations but tangible examples of how AI can significantly enhance human productivity. He further emphasized the “ambition of the vision” and the “caliber of the team,” noting their ability to attract top talent and translate it into real-world products as a “uniquely compelling venture opportunity.”
This latest Series A round brings Fundamental Research Labs’ total funding to over $40 million. The company previously raised $9 million in a seed round last year, co-led by First Spark Ventures and Patron, with participation from a16z SPEEDRUN and Eric Schmidt.
Looking ahead, Dr. Yang indicated the company’s openness to exploring various application models. While currently focused on productivity applications due to their immediate value creation potential, the long-term vision extends to solving physical problems and developing embodied AI, including robots. “Eventually, we want to solve physical problems and move towards working on embodiment,” Dr. Yang concluded.