Sapient introduced the "Hierarchical Reasoning Model" in June 2025, then open-sourced its "Hierarchical Reasoning Model" Text model this May.
The model uses recurrent architectural loops, while OpenAI GPT-6 Astra is now putting looped recurrence in latent space into the frontier conversation.
The overlapping idea was: reasoning can spend computation by repeatedly updating internal state rather than relying only on a conventional transformer stack.
Sapient made that research decision before it had much industry validation, then published a model people could actually inspect and retrain.
Excited to see the conversation around OpenAI’s Astra bringing recurrent architectures into the frontier spotlight. At Sapient, recurrence has been central to o...