Prosus Ventures has led a US$30 million Series A funding round in Fundamental Research Labs, an applied artificial intelligence research company focused on developing long-term autonomous and collaborative AI agents. Other investors in the round include a16z Speedrun, Patron, First Spark, Factorial, VamosVentures, and several individual investors such as Patrick Collison.
Fundamental Research Labs was co-founded by Dr. Robert Yang, an AI researcher and computational neuroscientist who previously served as faculty at MIT. The founding team includes researchers and programmers from institutions such as MIT, Stanford, Google X, and Citadel. The company’s goal is to create digital humans—machines designed to embody fundamental human qualities through advanced AI.
The company’s early projects involved training AI agents in collaborative gaming environments like Minecraft and Roblox. These agents interacted with millions of users before the technology transitioned to more general computer tasks in late 2024. On OSWorld, a recognized benchmark for computer-use agent performance, Fundamental’s system achieved 48.45%, which was nearly twice that of other leading labs at the time.
In 2025, Fundamental Research Labs introduced Fairies—a general-purpose AI agent capable of running directly on users’ desktops to automate routine tasks. More recently, they launched Shortcut, described as the first Superhuman Excel agent. According to the company’s data, Shortcut solves championship-level cases in under ten minutes with over 80% accuracy—ten times faster than humans—and has outperformed first-year analysts from major consulting firms like McKinsey and Goldman Sachs in blind studies evaluated by managers from those companies.
Dr. Robert Yang stated: “Few startups are working on advancing general AI agent capabilities through fundamental research. Our mission is to deliver research breakthroughs that lead to increasingly impactful products. As our agents improve, classical methods of alignment will no longer be enough. We are learning from how humans build collaborative relationships and civilization.”
Sandeep Bakshi, Investment Partner at Prosus Ventures commented: “We’re excited to back Fundamental Research Labs in its mission to bring AI agents out of the sandbox and into the real world. Grounded in human neuroscience and driven by the ambition to build digital humans, their work has huge potential to change how humans interact with machines. At Prosus Ventures, we look to back entrepreneurs with unchained ambition — and Fundamental is building something truly transformative and boundless. We’re thrilled to be part of the journey and support Robert, Nico, Shuying and the whole team.”
The latest funding follows a US$9 million seed round completed in May 2024 co-led by First Spark Ventures and Patron along with participation from a16z SPEEDRUN; total investment raised now exceeds US$40 million.
Fundamental Research Labs is based in San Francisco.
