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Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev Pushes AI Coding Toward Proofs of Correctness

September 16, 2026 at 23:15 EDT

Software Dev & Coding
AI Agents
Research & Papers

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is arguing that the next stage of AI-assisted programming will be formal proof, not just faster code generation. The claim puts Harmonic, the mathematical-reasoning lab he co-founded with Tudor Achim, at the center of a shift from AI-written code toward software that can be checked against machine-readable specifications.

Sep. 17, 2026 · Robinhood and Harmonic

AI coding moves from writing to proving

Vlad Tenev's thesis is that coding agents must produce checkable evidence, not just plausible code. Harmonic's Aristotle is being positioned around formal verification for software, hardware and mathematics.

96.8%

VERINA tasks resolved in Harmonic's run

189

formal specifications in the benchmark

$1.45B

Harmonic valuation after Series C

VERINA outcomes

Aristotle's run resolved true statements, false statements and left a small remainder unresolved.

160

proved true

proved false

unresolved

The proof loop

Specification

Implementation

Formal proof

Machine check

Why it matters

Proof artifacts can give reviewers stronger assurance than tests alone, especially where failures are costly.

What can break

A proof is only as useful as the specification it checks, and current tools still require human validation.

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