A 2022 computer simulation showed that the first supermassive black holes can arise in rare turbulent clumps of gas, called primordial halos, that were fed by unusually strong streams of cold gas. The key simulation result was that cold flows suppressed star formation in the turbulent halo until the halo’s gravity was finally able to overcome the turbulence and formed two direct-collapse black holes of 31,000 M ☉ and 40,000 M ☉. The birth of the first SMBHs can therefore be a result of standard cosmological structure formation — contrary to what had been thought for almost two decades.