PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Daan Wierstra

Also known as Daniël Pieter Wierstra

Daan Wierstra is an AI researcher whose papers cover deep reinforcement learning, evolution strategies and deep generative models. He completed a doctorate under Jürgen Schmidhuber in 2010, and in 2014 he co-wrote Natural Evolution Strategies. ICLR gave its 2026 Test of Time award to Continuous control with deep reinforcement learning, a paper he co-wrote. In 2024 he co-founded H, a Paris AI start-up, and in August 2024 he left it with co-founders Karl Tuyls and Julien Perolat. As of October 2026 he is affiliated with Google DeepMind.

Timeline

  1. 2010

    A doctorate under Jürgen Schmidhuber

    He completes a doctorate under Jürgen Schmidhuber in 2010, followed by a postdoc with Wulfram Gerstner at EPFL.

  2. 2014

    Natural Evolution Strategies

    In 2014 he co-writes Natural Evolution Strategies, a family of black-box optimization algorithms that use the natural gradient.

  3. 2014

    Stochastic backpropagation at ICML

    A 2014 paper with Danilo Jimenez Rezende and Shakir Mohamed, Stochastic Backpropagation and Approximate Inference in Deep Generative Models, appears at the International Conference on Machine Learning.

  4. May 2024

    Co-founding H in Paris

    Paris AI start-up H, which he co-founds, raises $220 million in seed funding in May 2024.

  5. August 2024

    Leaving H with two co-founders

    In August 2024 he leaves H along with co-founders Karl Tuyls and Julien Perolat.

  6. 2026

    A Test of Time award

    In 2026 ICLR gives its Test of Time award to Continuous control with deep reinforcement learning, a paper he co-wrote for ICLR 2016.

  7. As of October 2026

    Affiliated with Google DeepMind

    He is affiliated with Google DeepMind in the United Kingdom.

Sources and credits

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  1. Daan Wierstra - Wikidata wikidata.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. IC Colloquium : The Role of Neurification in Building Machines that Think - EPFL memento.epfl.ch. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. Natural Evolution Strategies jmlr.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. Stochastic Backpropagation and Approximate Inference in Deep Generative Models proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. H: France-Based AI Company Raises $220 Million In Seed Funding pulse2.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. PYMNTS | 3 Co-Founders Leave French AI Startup H pymnts.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. "Frontier action model" AI startup H loses three founders months after $220M round the-decoder.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  8. Announcing the Test of Time Awards from ICLR 2016 – ICLR Blog blog.iclr.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  9. [1509.02971] Continuous control with deep reinforcement learning arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  10. Wierstra, Daan, DeepMind Technologies Limited | TOPSCINET topscinet.com. Checked 14 October 2026.