by Richard Socher
— OUT • SEPTEMBER 22, 2026
The Eureka Machine
A new scientific renaissance is beginning, and AI is the reason. From Richard Socher, AI researcher and founder of Recursive, You.com, and AIX Ventures, The Eureka Machine is a blueprint for automating the scientific method itself — and an argument that accelerating scientific discovery is the most consequential thing artificial intelligence will ever do.
PublicAffairs
"Grounded and accessible, this is a remarkable look at the present and some exciting possibilities for the future."
— Publishers Weekly
"There is a lot being written about AI, but this is the first book dedicated to showing how AI makes science better."
— Kevin Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of The Inevitable
"An insider's richly detailed yet accessible view of AI's positive potential"
— Kirkus Reviews
— THE BOOK
A century of breakthroughs, compressed into a decade.
Researchers are publishing more papers than ever before, but human expertise has grown narrower — and the rate of scientific progress is slowing.
AI will reverse this trend. In The Eureka Machine, Richard Socher argues that AI will usher in a century's worth of breakthroughs in just the next decade, as each stage of the scientific process — from hypothesis to experiment, from data to theory — is connected and transformed.
The Eureka Machine pulls back the curtain on how AI is already revolutionizing fields as diverse as medicine, cell biology, economics, neuroscience, and astronomy — from radically sped-up drug development to simulated life-forms accurate down to the subcellular level.
Every branch of science will be transformed, but none more than the new science of intelligence itself. Essential reading for funders, founders, researchers, skeptics, and anyone curious about what the AI future will hold.
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— THE AUTHOR
Richard Socher
Richard Socher is the CEO and cofounder of Recursive, a company building self-improving superintelligence to automate knowledge discovery, and the CEO and founder of You.com, a web search infrastructure provider for AI. He is also the founder and managing partner at AIX Ventures, an AI venture capital firm.
Socher was previously an adjunct professor of computer science at Stanford, where he received his PhD, and the chief scientist and EVP at Salesforce, following the acquisition of his AI startup MetaMind. His pioneering research in natural language processing, including advances in word vectors and inventing prompt engineering, has shaped how neural networks understand language. He lives in the Bay Area.
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Praise for The Eureka Machine
Richard Socher built modern AI. Now he's written the book that explains where it's taking us.
STEVEN KOTLER
New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Impossible
In the long run, AI will transform our lives by accelerating science. This is our Eureka Machine, and how it works is brightly presented in this readable book by Richard Socher. There is a lot being written about AI, but this is the first book dedicated to showing how AI makes science better.
KEVIN KELLY
New York Times bestselling author of The Inevitable
Richard Socher is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence. His work in deep learning and natural language processing helped lay the foundation for today's Agentic Revolution. In The Eureka Machine, Socher offers a powerful vision for how AI can transform the scientific process itself, accelerating discovery and unlocking breakthroughs that can improve lives around the world.
MARC BENIOFF
Chair, CEO, and cofounder, Salesforce
Many books predict that AI will enable amazing discoveries in science and medicine. The Eureka Machine is the first clear exposition of how AI will not only facilitate discoveries in scientific fields, but will make discoveries in the way we make discoveries, improving the scientific method itself.
PETER NORVIG
Coauthor of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
The Eureka Machine is a compelling read. Standing against the swirling money of AI, Richard Socher offers something rarer: a scientist's heartfelt and inspiring case for how AI can free science from its current sclerosis and open a new era of discovery that improves people's lives.
CHRISTOPHER MANNING
Professor of machine learning, Stanford University
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