This Startup Beat Gemini 3 on ARC-AGI — at Half the Cost

Poetiq is a new startup founded by former DeepMind researchers that recently achieved a major jump on the ARC-AGI benchmark by layering a recursive self-improvement system on top of Gemini 3. In this conversation at NeurIPS, YC's Francois Chaubaurd sat down with Poetiq co-founder Ian Fisher to find out how they're increasing performance using prompts and system design alone. They also explore recursive self-improvement, benchmarking progress toward AGI, and why automating prompt engineering may be one of the most powerful levers in AI today. Chapters 00:11 — Introducing Poetiq and the ARC-AGI Breakthrough 00:49 — How Big Is the Performance Jump? 01:18 — Ian Fisher’s Background: YC, Google, DeepMind 02:00 — Recursive Self-Improvement Explained 03:00 — Why Poetiq Targeted ARC-AGI 03:58 — Improving Models Without Access to Weights 04:26 — Ensembles, Voting, and System-Level Optimization 05:30 — Why Gemini 3 Changed Everything 06:21 — What’s Next: Benchmarks, Research, and Customers 07:14 — Is Recursive Self-Improvement a Path to AGI? 08:46 — When to Stop Hill-Climbing 09:16 — Automating Prompt Engineers and Agents

Francois ChaubaurdhostIan Fisherguest

Jan 29, 202611mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: January 29, 2026
Duration: 11m
Channel: YC Root Access
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Poetiq is a new startup founded by former DeepMind researchers that recently achieved a major jump on the ARC-AGI benchmark by layering a recursive self-improvement system on top of Gemini 3. In this conversation at NeurIPS, YC's Francois Chaubaurd sat down with Poetiq co-founder Ian Fisher to find out how they're increasing performance using prompts and system design alone. They also explore recursive self-improvement, benchmarking progress toward AGI, and why automating prompt engineering may be one of the most powerful levers in AI today. Chapters 00:11 — Introducing Poetiq and the ARC-AGI Breakthrough 00:49 — How Big Is the Performance Jump? 01:18 — Ian Fisher’s Background: YC, Google, DeepMind 02:00 — Recursive Self-Improvement Explained 03:00 — Why Poetiq Targeted ARC-AGI 03:58 — Improving Models Without Access to Weights 04:26 — Ensembles, Voting, and System-Level Optimization 05:30 — Why Gemini 3 Changed Everything 06:21 — What’s Next: Benchmarks, Research, and Customers 07:14 — Is Recursive Self-Improvement a Path to AGI? 08:46 — When to Stop Hill-Climbing 09:16 — Automating Prompt Engineers and Agents

SPEAKERS

Francois Chaubaurd
host
Visiting partner at Y Combinator and host of YC Root Access interviews.
Ian Fisher
guest
Co-founder and co-CEO of Poetic, discussing their ARC-AGI results and model-evaluation approach.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of YC Root Access, featuring Francois Chaubaurd and Ian Fisher, This Startup Beat Gemini 3 on ARC-AGI — at Half the Cost explores poetic boosts Gemini 3 ARC-AGI scores via recursive optimization Poetic reports 54% on the ARC-AGI 2 private test set by running its system on top of Gemini 3, exceeding Gemini 3 DeepThink’s ~45% while costing about half as much.

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