Humans&, a human-centric AI startup, has raised $480 million in seed funding at a $4.48 billion valuation (20/01). Investors include Nvidia, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and venture firms SV Angel, GV, and Emerson Collective.

Founding Team Draws on Anthropic, Google, and xAI Expertise

The startup was founded by Andi Peng, a former Anthropic researcher who worked on reinforcement learning and post-training of Claude 3.5 through 4.5; Georges Harik, Google’s seventh employee who helped build its first advertising systems; Eric Zelikman and Yuchen He, ex-xAI researchers who helped develop the Grok chatbot; and Stanford professor Noah Goodman. Humans& employs about 20 staff from OpenAI, Meta, Reflection, AI2, and MIT.

Human-Centric AI Focus and Product Goals

Humans& aims to use software to help people collaborate, similar to an AI version of an instant messaging app.

The company plans to train AI in new ways, such as programming chatbots to request information from users and store it for later use.

According to its website, the startup wants AI to act “as a deeper connective tissue that strengthens organizations and communities.”

Mega Seed Funding Reflects AI Investment Trends

The $480 million seed round aligns with recent trends of investors funding startups founded by former AI lab employees.

Humans& highlighted the need for innovations in “long-horizon and multi-agent reinforcement learning, memory, and user understanding,” combining science and product development in its approach.

Industry Comparisons Highlight Competitive AI Landscape

Other large seed rounds include Thinking Machines Lab, which raised $2 billion in July at a $12 billion valuation, Unconventional AI’s $475 million in December at a $4.5 billion valuation, and Lila Sciences’ $200 million last March.

LMArena, a UC Berkeley spinout, raised $100 million at a $600 million valuation last May and announced a $150 million Series A this January at a $1.7 billion post-money valuation.

PHOTO: TECHSTARTUPS

This article was created with AI assistance.

We make every effort to ensure the accuracy of our content, some information may be incorrect or outdated. Please let us know of any corrections at [email protected].