AI startup Recursive Superintelligence has signed on to lease $410 million in compute from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Recursive designs open-ended self-improving systems, emerging from stealth in May of this year with $650 million in funding and a $4.65bn valuation.

The compute agreement is a multi-year deal, and Recursive's founder and CEO, Richard Socher, told TechCrunch that this is "likely going to be one of the smallest compute deals we're going to sign in the next few years."

"Partnering with AWS gives us the infrastructure to run self-improving AI research at a scale very few teams in the world are capable of," Socher added. "We've already shown our automated AI research system can outperform years of human optimization. As our research loops run autonomously, that advantage will compound. We’re excited to partner with AWS and make our system and its infrastructure the fastest at invention generation."

Jason Bennet, VP for startups and venture capital at AWS, said that the agreement will see AWS "co-develop infrastructure purpose-built for these types of companies."

AWS is not investing in Recursive as part of the deal, however.

Bennet added: "Self-improving AI creates a compounding demand for compute — every research loop generates the next experiment. In just a few months, Recursive has produced results that outpaced years of community-driven optimization. AWS gives them the elasticity to run those loops in parallel at massive scale, and the reliability, security, and purpose-built compute to turn months of sequential research into days of parallel discovery."

Details about the compute set to be used by Recursive on AWS have not been provided. DCD has contacted the startup for more information.

Recursive states that it believes "the fastest path to superintelligence will be realized by AI that recursively improves itself, and does so via open-ended algorithms that drive endless innovation." It is starting with creating "AI that improves AI."

Founder and CEO Richard Socher is also the founder of AIX Ventures and You.com. He previously served as chief scientist at Salesforce.

The company should not be confused with Ricursive Intelligence, another self-improving AI company that is starting with AI-powered chip designs.