NeoCognition, an AI research lab based in Palo Alto, has raised $40 million in a seed funding round, emerging from stealth mode. The round was co-led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst Ventures, with participation from Vista Equity Partners and notable angel investors such as Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica. The company, co-founded by Ohio State University's Yu Su, aims to address AI agent reliability, with current task success rates at about 50%. NeoCognition's innovative approach allows AI agents to autonomously develop a "world model" of their operational domain, enabling rapid specialization without relying on general pre-training. The company targets enterprise clients, particularly SaaS companies, to integrate AI agents that continuously improve within their products and workflows. The team, comprising mainly PhD holders, has yet to release public products but plans to leverage Vista Equity Partners' enterprise software connections for distribution.