Ex-OpenAI researchers’ Humans& raises $480M: Can it beat Thinking Machines Lab?
2 min read
AI Company Secures Major Seed Investment
January 23, 2026
Artificial intelligence firm Humans& has secured $480 million in seed funding, valuing the company at $4.48 billion. The investment round was spearheaded by SV Angel and included contributions from Ron Conway, co-founder Georges Harik, NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, and GV.
This substantial backing underscores investor confidence in emerging “next-generation AI labs” developing systems surpassing current chatbot and AI agent capabilities. Many of these ventures are led by researchers from leading AI organizations.
Notably, NVIDIA continues its trend of strategic AI investments, following recent commitments like Baseten, as demand for its computational hardware grows.
The Vision Behind Humans&
Founded in late 2025 by alumni of prominent AI laboratories, the team includes:
- Eric Zelikman (former xAI engineer, contributed to Grok-2)
- Georges Harik (Google pioneer instrumental in Gmail/Android/ads)
- Andi Peng (ex-Anthropic, Claude reinforcement learning specialist)
- Yuchen He (xAI alumnus)
- Noah Goodman (Stanford psychology/computer science professor)
The company champions human-focused AI development—prioritizing systems that enhance communication, collaboration, and teamwork rather than replacing human roles. “True progress emerges through mutual understanding, trust-building, and coordinated efforts,” states Humans&.
Positioning itself against next-gen AI competitors like Thinking Machines Lab and Unconventional AI, while also challenging established players such as Anthropic and Adept, Humans& develops AI collaborators that comprehend context, intention, and group dynamics. Their goal is to accelerate decision-making and creative problem-solving through multi-agent reinforcement learning and memory-enhanced models.
The company plans to debut its first product in early 2026, aiming to redefine how humans and AI systems interact through fundamental innovations in training methodologies and user engagement.
About Author
