Former Google and Apple Researchers Launch a Startup to Build AI's Missing Feedback Loop

Trajectory is a new startup aiming to help companies improve AI products by training on real-world user interactions. The platform targets continuous learning, a capability viewed as a major barrier to further AI progress. Current systems often become more capable through repeated training on large datasets, but they stop improving after training ends. Companies have had difficulty building AI products that learn from errors in real time, despite some continual learning breakthroughs. Trajectory raised a $15 million seed round at a $115 million post-money valuation led by Conviction, with participation from other venture firms and individual investors including Jeff Dean and Fei-Fei Li. Founders include Ronak Malde, Arjun Karanam, and Michael Elabd.

"Trajectory wants to build a platform for AI that can learn continuously, a capability that researchers have long held up as a major barrier to further AI progress. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have found success training increasingly capable versions of AI models, especially for domains such as coding, math, and science. However, these systems stop getting smarter after their training is done."

"While there have been some recent breakthroughs in continual learning, tech companies have generally struggled to make AI products that learn from their errors in real time. In December 2025 at NeurIPS, one of the largest annual AI research conferences, Turing award winner Richard Sutton argued that continual learning is essential for building superintelligent agents."

"Trajectory has raised a $15 million seed round at a $115 million post-money valuation, led by the venture capital firm Conviction, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Radical VC, and BoxGroup. Individual investors also participated in the round, including Google DeepMind's chief scientist, Jeff Dean, as well as the so-called "godmother of AI," Stanford professor and World Labs CEO Fei-Fei Li."

"The other cofounders of Trajectory include Arjun Karanam, a former AI researcher at Apple who worked on the Vision Pro, and Michael Elabd, who previously worked in Google DeepMind's robotics division. Malde was previously an AI researcher at Windsurf, and he later became one of only a handful of employees who went to work at Google DeepMind when it hired the coding startup's top talent in a $2.4 billion deal last year."

Read at WIRED