Sutskever's Periodization: 2020–2025 Was the 'Scaling Era,' 2026 Starts a New 'Research Era' Where Algorithms Beat Compute

StartupHub.ai·medium signal

Now CEO of the $32B Safe Superintelligence, Sutskever frames AI history in three phases — research (2012–2020), scaling (2020–2025), and a new research era beginning in 2026 in which algorithmic innovation, not more compute, drives progress. It's a pointed break from the 'just add GPUs' consensus and implies the next gains come from ideas, not capex. For builders it suggests the frontier could get less predictable and less purely capital-gated over the next cycle.