Flapping Airplanes, a new research-focused AI lab, is aiming to train models with far less data than traditional foundation models. Founded by brothers Ben and Asher Spector and Aidan Smith, the lab secured $180M in seed funding to explore algorithms inspired by the human brain — but not limited by it.

The team sees data efficiency as key to unlocking AI that can reason, generalize, and adapt without requiring rivers of information. “We’re not trying to be better than the brain — we’re trying to be different,” says Ben, emphasizing that the lab wants AI capable of achieving fundamentally new scientific and technological insights.