# humans&

> humans& is a human-centric frontier AI lab based in the San Francisco Bay Area, founded in September 2025 by researchers and builders from xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Stanford. Rather than building AI to replace people, the company designs models and products around how humans connect, communicate, and work together - investing in long-horizon and multi-agent reinforcement learning, memory, and user understanding. It launched publicly in January 2026 with a $480 million all-cash seed round at a roughly $4.48 billion valuation, backed by NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, SV Angel, GV, and Emerson Collective.

- **Founded:** 2025
- **Headquarters:** Redwood City, California, United States
- **Founders:** Eric Zelikman (Co-Founder & CEO), Georges Harik (Co-Founder), Andi Peng (Co-Founder), Yuchen He (Co-Founder), Noah Goodman (Co-Founder)
- **Team size:** ~20-26 employees (2026)
- **Products:** Human-centric frontier models, Collaboration software (in development), Open source & academic contributions
- **Notable:** Raised one of the largest seed rounds in AI history - $480M, all cash and unstructured - roughly three months after being founded., Reached an approximately $4.48 billion valuation at seed stage., Assembled a founding team spanning xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Stanford.

## Products & services

- **Human-centric frontier models** — Foundation models trained with a focus on long-horizon and multi-agent reinforcement learning, memory, and user understanding - built to support human collaboration rather than autonomous replacement.
- **Collaboration software (in development)** — Reported to be an AI-powered communication/instant-messaging-style product that helps people work together, with the AI acting as connective tissue across a team or organization. Not yet publicly launched as of mid-2026.
- **Open source & academic contributions** — Stated intent to contribute back to open source and academic research and to collaborate with the broader research community.

## Achievements

- Raised one of the largest seed rounds in AI history - $480M, all cash and unstructured - roughly three months after being founded.
- Reached an approximately $4.48 billion valuation at seed stage.
- Assembled a founding team spanning xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Stanford.
- Attracted investment from NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, GV, and Emerson Collective in a single round.

## Latest updates

- **2025-10** — Reports emerge that Eric Zelikman and Georges Harik are raising up to $1 billion for a new frontier AI lab at a ~$5 billion valuation.
- **2026-01** — humans& launches publicly and announces a $480M all-cash seed round at a ~$4.48B valuation, led by SV Angel and co-founder Georges Harik with NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, GV, and Emerson Collective participating.

## Links

- Website: https://humansand.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/humansand
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/humansand

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/humans
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-05