# EvoCUA: Evolving Computer Use Agents via Learning from Scalable Synthetic Experience

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15876 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15876/

## Key facts

- Cited by 53 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 28 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jan 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/agents/general-llm-agent-frameworks-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Qwen2.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13923/) (2025)
- [Qwen3-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21631/) (2025)
- [MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02255/) (2023)
- [OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07972/) (2024)
- [Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20330/) (2024)
- [UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12326/) (2025)
- [MMMU-Pro: A More Robust Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02813/) (2024)
- [Group-in-Group Policy Optimization for LLM Agent Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10978/) (2025)
- [OCRBench: On the Hidden Mystery of OCR in Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07895/) (2023)
- [Scaling Synthetic Data Creation with 1,000,000,000 Personas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.20094/) (2024)
- [Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05243/) (2024)
- [OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23218/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models for Mathematical Reasoning: Progresses and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00157/) (2024)
- [Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04454/) (2024)
- [Step-DPO: Step-wise Preference Optimization for Long-chain Reasoning of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18629/) (2024)
- [ScreenSpot-Pro: GUI Grounding for Professional High-Resolution Computer Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07981/) (2025)
- [ShowUI: One Vision-Language-Action Model for GUI Visual Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17465/) (2024)
- [UI-TARS-2 Technical Report: Advancing GUI Agent with Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02544/) (2025)
- [Mobile-Agent-v3: Fundamental Agents for GUI Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15144/) (2025)
- [OpenCUA: Open Foundations for Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09123/) (2025)
- [Scaling Computer-Use Grounding via User Interface Decomposition and Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13227/) (2025)
- [Agent Learning via Early Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08558/) (2025)
- [ScaleCUA: Scaling Open-Source Computer Use Agents with Cross-Platform Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15221/) (2025)
- [Step-GUI Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15431/) (2025)
- [UltraCUA: A Foundation Model for Computer Use Agents with Hybrid Action](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17790/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [OpenClaw-RL: Train Any Agent Simply by Talking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10165/) (2026)
- [Mobile-Agent-v3.5: Multi-platform Fundamental GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16855/) (2026)
- [LongCat-Next: Lexicalizing Modalities as Discrete Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27538/) (2026)
- [Qwen-AgentWorld: Language World Models for General Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24597/) (2026)
- [CUA-Gym: Scaling Verifiable Training Environments and Tasks for Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25624/) (2026)
- [When Benign Inputs Lead to Severe Harms: Eliciting Unsafe Unintended Behaviors of Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08235/) (2026)
- [The Blind Spot of Agent Safety: How Benign User Instructions Expose Critical Vulnerabilities in Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10577/) (2026)
- [SPADE: Self-Play in Adaptive Synthetic Executable Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.19197/) (2026)
- [UI-Voyager: A Self-Evolving GUI Agent Learning via Failed Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24533/) (2026)
- [OpenMobile: Building Open Mobile Agents with Task and Trajectory Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15093/) (2026)
- [ToolCUA: Towards Optimal GUI-Tool Path Orchestration for Computer Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12481/) (2026)
- [MementoGUI: Learning Agentic Multimodal Memory Control for Long-Horizon GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18652/) (2026)
- [OpenComputer: Verifiable Software Worlds for Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19769/) (2026)
- [AndroidDaily: A Verifiable Benchmark for Mobile GUI Agents on Real-World Closed-Source Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27761/) (2026)
- [UI-MOPD: Multi-Platform On-Policy Distillation for Unified GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04425/) (2026)
- [RSIAgent: Autonomous Exploration for Recursive Self-improvement in New Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15364/) (2026)
- [SCALECUA: Scaling Computer Use Agents with Verifiable Task Synthesis and Efficient Online RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.11185/) (2026)
- [VLAA-GUI: Knowing When to Stop, Recover, and Search, A Modular Framework for GUI Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.21375/) (2026)
- [GUI vs. CLI: Execution Bottlenecks in Screen-Only and Skill-Mediated Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24551/) (2026)
- [What Happens Before Decoding? Prefill Determines GUI Grounding in VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12549/) (2026)
- [HyMobileAgent: Data-Environment Co-Scaling for Efficient GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.14548/) (2026)
- [GUI-Perturbed: Domain Randomization Reveals Systematic Brittleness in GUI Grounding Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14262/) (2026)
- [Interactive Reward Agent: GUI Task Evaluation via Environment-State Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25904/) (2026)
- [MAGA: Multi-Platform Self-Fusion of GUI Agents via Structured Action Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.29320/) (2026)
- [StepJack: Benchmarking Computer-Use Agent Safety Against Multi-Step Indirect Prompt Injection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06477/) (2026)
- [Benchmarking and Improving GUI Agents in High-Dynamic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25380/) (2026)
- [Training Computer Use Agents to Assess the Usability of Graphical User Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26020/) (2026)
- [StainFlow: Entity-Stain Tracking and Evidence Linking for Process Rewards in GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07027/) (2026)
- [One Forward Beats Two: InnerZoom for Accurate and Efficient GUI Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30084/) (2026)
- [UI-Venus-2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00028/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The development of native computer-use agents (CUA) represents a significant leap in multimodal AI. However, their potential is currently bottlenecked by the constraints of static data scaling. Existing paradigms relying primarily on passive imitation of static datasets struggle to capture the intricate causal dynamics inherent in long-horizon computer tasks. In this work, we introduce EvoCUA, a native computer use agentic model. Unlike static imitation, EvoCUA integrates data generation and policy optimization into a self-sustaining evolutionary cycle. To mitigate data scarcity, we develop a verifiable synthesis engine that autonomously generates diverse tasks coupled with executable validators. To enable large-scale experience acquisition, we design a scalable infrastructure orchestrating tens of thousands of asynchronous sandbox rollouts. Building on these massive trajectories, we propose an iterative evolving learning strategy to efficiently internalize this experience. This mechanism dynamically regulates policy updates by identifying capability boundaries -- reinforcing successful routines while transforming failure trajectories into rich supervision through error analysis and self-correction. Empirical evaluations on the OSWorld benchmark demonstrate that EvoCUA achieves a success rate of 56.7%, establishing a new open-source state-of-the-art. Notably, EvoCUA significantly outperforms the previous best open-source model, OpenCUA-72B (45.0%), and surpasses leading closed-weights models such as UI-TARS-2 (53.1%). Crucially, our results underscore the generalizability of this approach: the evolving paradigm driven by learning from experience yields consistent performance gains across foundation models of varying scales, establishing a robust and scalable path for advancing native agent capabilities.