# Joon Sung Park

> Joon Sung Park is the CEO and Co-founder of Simile, a Stanford-spinout AI company that raised $100M Series A in February 2026 to build digital twins that simulate human behavior and predict consumer decisions. A PhD in Computer Science from Stanford (2025), Park pioneered the concept of 'generative agents' - AI actors with memory, reflection, and planning capabilities - through a landmark 2023 paper that earned a Best Paper Award at UIST and became one of the most-cited works in HCI. Before launching Simile, he was an oil painter trained in hyper-realism, a background that infuses his research with a rare sensitivity to what makes humans human. His digital-twin platform has already signed CVS Health and Telstra as customers, and his model correctly forecast 8 out of 10 questions asked at a real earnings call.

- **Role:** CEO & Co-founder at Simile
- **Organizations:** Simile, Stanford University
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.A. in Computer Science, Swarthmore College, M.S. in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ph.D. in Computer Science, Stanford University
- **Known for:** Best Paper Award at UIST 2023 for 'Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior', Best Paper Award at CHI 2022, Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship (2022)

## Career timeline

- **2013-2017** — B.A. in Computer Science at Swarthmore College
- **2018-2020** — M.S. in Computer Science at UIUC; thesis on human-algorithm interaction under Prof. Karrie Karahalios
- **2020-2025** — Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University, HCI and NLP labs
- **2022** — Internship at Microsoft Research, Seattle, with Dr. Meredith Ringel Morris and Dr. Ece Kamar
- **2022** — Received Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship
- **2023** — Published 'Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior' (UIST 2023 Best Paper Award)
- **2024** — Taught CS 222: AI Agents and Simulations at Stanford (Fall 2024)
- **2025** — Completed PhD at Stanford; co-founded Simile in Palo Alto
- **2026-02** — Simile raises $100M Series A led by Index Ventures, with backing from Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy

## Achievements

- Best Paper Award at UIST 2023 for 'Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior'
- Best Paper Award at CHI 2022
- Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship (2022)
- Terry Winograd Fellowship (2021)
- Siebel Scholar Award (2019)
- Co-coined the term 'foundation model'
- Raised $100M Series A for Simile at fewer than 30 employees
- 18,000+ citations on Google Scholar
- Featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Forbes, WIRED, Nature, Science, The Guardian, NBC News
- Taught CS 222 at Stanford: AI Agents and Simulations
- TED Talk: 'A simulation of human reality, powered by AI' (TEDAI 2023)

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Simile raises $100M Series A led by Index Ventures; backers include Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy; customers include CVS Health and Telstra Group
- **2026-02** — Simile exits stealth mode after 7 months of development
- **2025-06** — Park completes PhD at Stanford and assumes role as CEO of Simile full-time
- **2024-09** — Park teaches CS 222 (AI Agents and Simulations) at Stanford as instructor
- **2023-10** — TED Talk at TEDAI 2023: 'A simulation of human reality, powered by AI'
- **2023-10** — Best Paper Award at UIST 2023 for 'Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior'

## Links

- Website: https://www.joonsungpark.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joonspark/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/joon_s_pk
- GitHub: https://github.com/joonspk-research
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/joon-s-pk.bsky.social
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joon.s.pk/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/joon-park
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-14