Record-setting early investment underscores shift toward collaborative and human-empowering artificial intelligence

San Francisco / January 20, 2026 — Humans&, a newly launched artificial intelligence startup backed by former researchers from Anthropic, xAI, Google and other leading AI labs, announced today that it has raised $480 million in seed funding at a valuation of approximately $4.48 billion — one of the largest seed rounds ever recorded in the technology sector.

The funding round was led by SV Angel and co-founder Georges Harik, with participation from heavyweights including Nvidia, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Alphabet’s VC arm, GV. According to industry trackers, the oversubscribed round attracted additional support from high-profile venture firms and angel investors, showing strong market confidence in the team’s vision.

Humans& was founded late last year by a group of AI veterans — including CEO Eric Zelikman, formerly of xAI where he worked on training data for Grok-2, and Georges Harik, an early Google pioneer instrumental in building Gmail and Google Docs. The team’s pedigree also includes researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google DeepMind and leading academic institutions.

Unlike many startups chasing raw generative output or autonomous agents, Humans& positions itself around a “human-centric” AI philosophy. The company says its technology will focus on enhancing human collaboration, communication and productivity rather than fully replacing people — aiming to create systems that can plan, learn over long horizons, and recall past interactions to assist users more effectively.

“We aim to build AI that coordinates with people and other AIs where appropriate to help individuals and teams do more — and do it together,” Zelikman told reporters.

The startup plans to launch its first product within the year, further signaling that the AI funding landscape is broadening beyond language chat interfaces and into platforms to amplify human agency.

Venture capital trackers noted today’s deal alongside other major late-stage investments, underscoring a continued investor appetite for ambitious AI projects worldwide, even as the overall macroeconomic climate remains cautious.

sources: (AI generated from Reuters ,Tech Crunch and Axios