AI Veterans Launch Humans& Lab with $480 Million to Build Human-Centric Systems

A new frontier artificial intelligence lab named humans& officially launched this week with a mission to prioritize human connection over autonomous replacement. The company raised a massive 480 million dollar seed round led by SV Angel and co-founder Georges Harik. This capital infusion values the startup at approximately 4.4 billion dollars, marking it as one of the most significant entries in the current AI landscape.

The founding team is a literal "who is who" of the industry, featuring veterans from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI. Notable names include researchers like Andi Peng and Eric Zelikman, along with academic leaders from Stanford and MIT. These individuals have previously led seminal work in reasoning and behavioral training for some of the world's most popular models.

High-profile investors have flocked to the project, including NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, and Google Ventures. Other backers include Emerson Collective, Forerunner, and individual tech titans like Marissa Mayer and Jerry Yang. This diverse support reflects a broad interest in shifting the AI narrative from isolated agents to systems that serve as connective tissue for communities.

The technical roadmap for humans& focuses on multi-agent reinforcement learning and long-horizon planning. Researchers at the lab intend to rethink how models are trained at scale to better understand memory and user relationships. By integrating science with product development, they hope to create tools that help people understand one another and build trust. "No one changes the world alone," the team noted in their launch announcement.

A unique cultural simulation on their official website visualizes their interest in societal-scale interaction. Based on the Axelrod model of cultural dissemination, the simulation shows how agents adopt traits through similarity. This research-heavy approach suggests the lab will focus as much on the sociology of AI as its raw intelligence. The lab is also distinguishing itself through strict privacy standards and a commitment to open research. They have stated they will not use tracking cookies or advertising pixels to monitor users across the web. Instead, they intend to contribute back to the academic community and open source ecosystem as they scale their operations in San Francisco.