Kitchener-Waterloo-based AI research startup Transformer Lab has launched Primus, an autonomous research tool that co-founder and CEO Ali Asaria called “the most ambitious thing I’ve ever been a part of.” The four-person team has spent two years working to fully automate the research process. Primus connects users with AI agents capable of producing “PhD-level” research in a fraction of the time of human counterparts, turning a single prompt-based research question from hypothesis to a completed paper in “hours to days” without additional human direction. Asaria hopes the tool addresses a global shortage of machine learning (ML) engineers, giving labs access to as many top engineers as they want “at the touch of a button.” Transformer Lab was co-founded with Tony Salomone, who worked at Asaria’s previous startups Tulip and Well.ca, and launched earlier this year with funding from Toronto’s Ripple Ventures and Kitchener-Waterloo’s Garage Capital. Primus projects run dozens or hundreds of agents using different AI models, from tiny ones to frontier models, while the company also trains its own models. Transformer Lab claims it has produced and published 30 “Masters to PhD-level” research papers in 30 consecutive days across domains including materials science, physics, seismology, protein design, audio generation, and 3D vision. One paper has received a citation in published research by the Google DeepMind team.