# Georges Harik

> Georges Harik is a Lebanese engineer, founder and investor whose work spans early Google products, the messaging service imo and AI research. A University of Michigan PhD and one of Google’s early employees, he helped guide new products including Gmail and Google Talk, co-founded imo with his brother Ralph, co-authored Quiet-STaR, and now co-founded humans&, an AI lab focused on collaboration.

- **Role:** Co-founder and member of technical staff at humans&
- **Organizations:** humans&, Google, imo, Notbad AI, hslabs.org
- **Nationality:** Lebanese
- **Education:** PhD in computer science, University of Michigan
- **Known for:** Was among Google’s first ten employees and helped develop its early product portfolio., Worked on AdSense targeting and Google’s new-product efforts, including Gmail and Google Talk., Co-founded imo, which Forbes reported handled over 50 million messages daily in 2012.

## Career timeline

- **1997** — Completed a University of Michigan PhD dissertation on learning gene linkage with genetic algorithms.
- **1999** — Joined Google among its earliest employees.
- **2004** — Helped oversee new Google products during Gmail’s launch.
- **2007** — Co-founded imo with his brother Ralph Harik.
- **2012** — Forbes reported that imo had 700,000 daily users sending over 50 million messages a day.
- **2024** — Co-authored the Quiet-STaR language-model reasoning paper.
- **2025** — Co-founded humans&.
- **2026** — humans& publicly launched and announced its seed backing.

## Achievements

- Was among Google’s first ten employees and helped develop its early product portfolio.
- Worked on AdSense targeting and Google’s new-product efforts, including Gmail and Google Talk.
- Co-founded imo, which Forbes reported handled over 50 million messages daily in 2012.
- Co-authored Quiet-STaR, a 2024 paper on language-model reasoning.
- Co-founded humans& and backed its seed round.

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — humans& publicly introduced its human-centered AI lab and announced a seed round led by SV Angel and co-founder Georges Harik.
- **2026-05** — Crunchbase listed Harik among investors in Deep Infra’s Series B round.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georges-harik-4579271
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/gharik

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/georges-harik
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-29