Humans&, a new artificial intelligence lab, has secured a landmark $480 million in seed funding, catapulting its valuation to an impressive $4.48 billion. The round was led by SV Angel and attracted high-profile investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Alphabet's GV. This substantial investment marks one of the largest seed rounds in history, signaling strong market confidence in the startup's ambitious vision for collaborative AI.
Esteemed Founders from Top AI Labs
The company is spearheaded by a team of distinguished researchers from the industry's most prominent AI labs and tech giants. Co-founder Georges Harik was Google's seventh employee, while Andi Peng joins from Anthropic and Noah D. Goodman from Google DeepMind. Their collective experience forms a powerful and credible foundation for the new venture's complex technological pursuits.
The founding roster also includes Eric Zelikman and Yuchen He, both formerly of xAI where they contributed to the Grok chatbot. The broader team of approximately 20 employees is composed of top talent from leading organizations like OpenAI, Meta, and MIT. This concentration of expertise underscores the company's deep commitment to pushing the boundaries of AI research.
A New Paradigm for Human-AI Collaboration
Humans& is built on the philosophy that AI should serve as a tool to empower people and enhance collaboration, not replace them. The company aims to create a "deeper connective tissue" that strengthens organizations by fundamentally rethinking how AI models are trained. This vision moves beyond the current generation of chatbots and simple agentic tools toward more integrated systems.
To achieve this, the startup will focus on innovations in long-horizon planning, multi-agent reinforcement learning, and memory retention in AI systems. A key part of their strategy involves tightly integrating fundamental scientific research with practical product development. This dual focus is intended to accelerate the creation of more sophisticated and genuinely useful artificial intelligence.
Major Investment in a Competitive Landscape
The significant financial backing highlights strong investor belief in the company's direction and its highly accomplished leadership team. The strategic collaboration with Nvidia is particularly noteworthy, providing access to critical hardware and software infrastructure for their demanding research. This partnership positions Humans& for rapid technological advancement in a competitive field.
This funding event is part of a larger trend of mega-seed rounds for AI startups founded by established experts from major labs. While substantial, it joins other large raises like Unconventional AI's $475 million, reflecting intense investor competition to back the next wave of AI innovation. The high valuations underscore the immense expectations placed on these new companies to deliver transformative technology.
With $480 million in capital and a team of leading AI researchers, Humans& is poised to make a significant impact on the future of artificial intelligence. The company's focus on collaborative systems and long-term AI planning sets it apart in a rapidly evolving industry. Its progress will be closely watched by investors and competitors alike as it works to turn its ambitious vision into a reality.