BENGALURU, January 22, 2026, 05:21 IST
- Humans& announced it secured $480 million in seed funding, valuing the company at $4.48 billion
- The round was led by SV Angel and co-founder Georges Harik, with Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and GV also participating.
- The startup is developing “human-centric” AI tools aimed at improving communication and collaboration, with a product expected to launch early this year
AI startup Humans& has secured $480 million in a seed round, pushing its valuation to $4.48 billion—a staggering amount for an early-stage AI lab. The funding round was spearheaded by Ron Conway’s SV Angel and co-founder Georges Harik, with backing from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and Alphabet’s venture capital arm GV, the company announced Tuesday. CEO Eric Zelikman told Reuters the model is designed to “coordinate with people” and other AIs “where appropriate,” aiming for a product launch early this year. (Reuters)
The size of the financing is crucial since seed rounds—the first institutional funding many startups secure—usually cover early research, hiring, and initial product development. In this case, investors are deploying late-stage capital right from the start, highlighting just how costly it has become to develop and train large AI models.
It also highlights how fast capital is shifting toward teams breaking free from established labs, as companies rush to develop systems that surpass chatbots and “agentic” tools — software designed to act on a user’s behalf — moving instead toward products integrated into everyday workflows.
Humans& is positioning itself as a “human-centric” AI lab, with founders and early hires coming from Anthropic, xAI, Google, and Stanford. According to TechCrunch, the startup aims to create collaboration software—basically, an AI-powered instant messaging app. They’re focusing on training methods tailored to longer tasks and multiple AI agents working in concert, plus features like memory and deeper user understanding. (TechCrunch)
Zelikman formerly worked at Elon Musk’s xAI and played a role in training data for Grok-2, according to Reuters. Harik was Google’s seventh hire, contributing to Gmail and Google Docs development, and was instrumental in Google’s acquisition of Android.
Crunchbase News reports that the company launched in September 2025, with its seed round labeled as “all cash” at the given valuation. Co-founder Andi Peng emailed Crunchbase News, saying Humans& plans to allocate most of the funding toward “compute”—that is, the processing power, typically GPU time, required for AI model training. (Crunchbase News)
The mega-seed round places Humans& alongside a select group of new AI labs that have raised nine-figure sums before rolling out widely adopted products. TechCrunch highlighted Thinking Machines Lab’s $2 billion seed round last year and Unconventional AI’s $475 million seed in December as recent cases of investors betting earlier and bigger.
The risks are clear. Humans& is still in its early days and only promises a product soon—not available just yet. Training cutting-edge models drains cash quickly, and with so many players in the field, it’s tough to shine even with top talent and a high-profile investor lineup. Plus, lofty valuations can backfire if the product doesn’t gain traction as quickly as investors hope.
For Nvidia, this deal continues its trend of supporting AI startups poised to consume large amounts of its chips, while securing a stake in firms developing on its hardware. For Humans&, the funding provides crucial runway—and significant computing power—to show that their “human-centric” approach can evolve beyond research into a usable product.
