Josh Tobin

According to his personal website, Tobin worked as a research scientist at OpenAI for about three years during his PhD at UC Berkeley; he had also been a consultant at McKinseyMcKinsey & CompanyMcKinsey & Company is a management consulting firm headquartered in New York, United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey and, after Marvin Bower established its “professional service” principles, grew into one of the largest pure consulting firms in the world; as of October 2026 it has more than 100 offices in over 50 countries and about 40,000 employees. It has also repeatedly faced regulatory investigations and public criticism over episodes such as its work with Enron, a former leader’s insider trading case, and its consulting for opioid manufacturers.Open the full entry and an investment partner at Dorm Room Fund.⁠[1]

In March 2017 he posted a paper on arXiv as first author with Wojciech Zaremba, Pieter Abbeel, and others, proposing “domain randomization” to transfer deep neural networks trained in simulation to real-world robotics tasks.⁠[2]

In June 2019 the Berkeley EECS department published his PhD thesis, Real-World Robotic Perception and Control Using Synthetic Data, advised by Pieter Abbeel.⁠[3][1]

Tobin co-founded Gantry with Vicki Cheung, a former head of infrastructure at OpenAI, to help AI teams decide when to retrain models and which data to use. In June 2022 the company emerged from stealth with $28.3 million in total funding, including a Series A co-led by Amplify Partners and Coatue; investors also included Greg Brockman and Pieter Abbeel.⁠[4][5]

Amplify Partners states that after earning his PhD at Berkeley and working at OpenAI, he founded Full Stack Deep Learning, a machine learning training program for engineers.⁠[5][1]

In May 2025 the TWIML AI Podcast introduced him as a member of technical staff at OpenAI and discussed OpenAI’s approach to building AI agents with him.⁠[6]

He is a member of the founding team of Recursive Superintelligence, founded in San Francisco in 2025; the other founding members include Richard Socher, Tim Rocktäschel, Jeff CluneJeff CluneJeff Clune is an artificial intelligence researcher who is a professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute; he works on open-ended algorithms and “AI-generating algorithms,” and in 2026 co-founded Recursive.Open the full entry, and Tim Shi. The company develops self-improving AI systems aimed at automating the scientific research process, applying them first to AI research itself.⁠[7][8][9]

In May 2026, Crowdfund Insider, citing the company, reported that Recursive Superintelligence had raised $650 million at a $4.65 billion valuation in a round led by GV and Greycroft, with AMD VenturesAMD VenturesAMD Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of semiconductor company AMD. It backs AI models, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, silicon and interconnect technologies, and provides portfolio companies with compute, engineering and market support. Its predecessor was the AMD Fusion Fund; AMD used the Ventures name in an official 2012 announcement.Open the full entry and NVIDIA also participating.⁠[7]

Recursive Superintelligence: Official website: https://www.recursive.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]

Recursive Superintelligence: Official account: https://x.com/Recursive_SI (opens in a new window)⁠[9][8]

Personal website: Public link: https://josh-tobin.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/josh_tobin_ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-tobin-4b3b10a9 (opens in a new window)⁠[8]