Sergey Brin on Von Neumann machines
From The Moonshot Mindset with Adam Savage and Sergey Brin: The Moonshot Podcast · · X, The Moonshot Factory
“I got one kind of fun thing that you and I have talked about before. That's surprisingly little work. I think, near as I can tell is happening, is on Von Neumann machines. The idea that you can build some little thing that can then build itself, maybe you send one to the moon or to some other planet or whatever, and they can start to assemble and do something. And in theory, exponentially build something.”
On , Sergey Brin, Co-Founder & Director at Google, spoke about Von Neumann machines during The Moonshot Mindset with Adam Savage and Sergey Brin: The Moonshot Podcast on X, The Moonshot Factory.
About Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin appeared at a Google DeepMind Build Day at AGI House in June 2026, where he discussed the convergence of specialized models into general ones, noting that Google's Gemini LLMs are increasingly state-of-the-art for math and scientific questions. He acknowledged that Google was "a little bit late" in focusing on coding but said the company is now "very much focused on code." Brin praised competitor GPT-5.5 for deep coding tasks while promoting Gemini 3.5 Flash for speed. He defined AGI as the idea that AI can improve itself, adding that to do anything a person can do, AI must understand and interact with the physical world. In a May 2026 episode of The Moonshot Podcast with Adam Savage and Astro Teller, Brin reflected on X's moonshot projects, saying the organization aims to be "the right amount too early" and that even premature products like Google Glass served as valuable learning platforms. He also discussed the concept of Von Neumann machines—self-replicating devices that could be sent to other planets. At the 2026 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony in April, Brin co-presented the mathematics prize to Frank Merle, describing Merle's work as seeking "hidden structure – and hidden beauty – within chaos."