Humans&, a human-centric artificial intelligence startup, has just pulled off a remarkable $480 million seed funding round. The company was co-founded by veterans from Anthropic, xAI, and Google itself. This large investment will allow the startup to develop a first-of-its-kind risk-adjusted performance model. Their vision is to create a “central nervous system” for the new human-plus-AI economy. The initiative aims to improve understanding, cooperation, and collaboration between people and AI tools inside and outside organizations, big and small.
The startup’s unique model is the critical connector between organizations. It purposefully learns the interest, career aspirations, and personal goals of every person in the ecosystem. By following this method, it serves the needs of the individuals and the needs of the organization as a whole. Because of this, it helps create a better collaborative working environment.
We made it co-founder and CEO Eric Zelikman, once a researcher at xAI, to talk about the significance of how they designed their model. We’re creating not just a product, but a model that puts communication and collaboration at its core,” he said. This new emphasis on interaction aims to ensure that AI feels more like a partner or coworker. You’ll have a gentle, informal discussion that flows like a chat with a good friend.
To execute on this rare opportunity, the Humans& team is a tour de force. It features Yuchen He, co-founder and former OpenAI researcher, as well as Andi Peng, co-founder and former employee at Anthropic. As a whole, they seek to push the boundaries of state-of-the-art long-horizon, multi-agent RL, both in theory and practice. This type of complementary interaction enables a more dynamic teamwork model in which humans and AI work together seamlessly.
Zelikman explained more about the real-world applications of their model. When it comes to a decision involving the whole big group, somebody usually has to step up. They get all the stakeholders in the same room and push each of them to articulate their vision – their vision for example of a new logo. This is a powerful example that shows how this technology can help make collective decision-making processes more efficient.
Andi Peng did an excellent job talking about the evolution of AI models. He added, “We’re coming to the end of the first paradigm of scaling…of these question-answering models getting great at niche areas and things that are very specialized…we’re now entering that second wave of adoption and the everyday consumer is just starting to grasp how to use this change.” This change comes in response to the increasing demand for tools that go beyond just sharing information and enable deeper engagement.
The Human’s model draws users in with an easy-going Q&A approach. This method improves natural user interaction and tends to create a more humane relationship between the human and the robot. Yuchen He emphasized the importance of memory in these interactions: “The model needs to remember things about itself, about you, and the better its memory, the better its user understanding.” To develop a convenient and customized workflow, natural language interfaces are key to the personalized AI experience, allowing the technology to respond to specific preferences and organizational needs.
The new startup wants to be able to serve members of every group, from small families to large employers with as many as 10,000 employees. This broad target market indicates a focus on inclusivity in AI adoption, ensuring that even smaller entities can benefit from advanced technological solutions.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a long-time tech observer, pointed to the potential of AI’s integration at the workflow level. AI is a technology that works best at the workflow level. Those employees who are working closest to the work, they know what the real rub’s at,” he said. He pressed that it’s the people on the front lines of operations who are in the best position to spot opportunities for automation or redesign.
We know that this is the company that will define a generation. We believe we can do a lot to radically transform how we use and engage with these models,” Zelikman told me enthusiastically. His vision certainly fits in with the overall mission of Humans& —to reshape the way humans and AI interact through intentional design and purposeful application.