Humans anda new company founded by the best researchers in Google, Anthropic, xAI, OpenAI And Metaamong others, announced Tuesday that it had raised a massive $480 million seed round at a staggering valuation of $4.48 billion.
So far, little is known about the company, founded in September 2025, which says its mission is to design an AI tool “around how people connect and work together, where collaboration and human understanding remain central.”
The co-founders are former Anthropic researchers Andi PengxAI researcher Eric Zelikmanfirst Google employee George HarikYuchen Him and Noah Goodman.
SV Angel 1 and co-founder Harik also led the round, which included the participation of Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, GV (Google Ventures), Emerson Collective, Precursor, S32, DCVC, Human capital, Felicis 2 And CRVamong “many others,” according to the company. The funding round was raised entirely in unstructured cash.
The startup says its AI lab aims to set “the standard for how AI supports human connection.” His tool, he adds, will act as connective tissue to facilitate collaboration between people and intelligent systems.
In a blog post, the company wrote: “No one changes the world alone. AI models quickly learn to reason better, code faster, and act in the world with increasing autonomy. But for humans, progress happens when we understand each other, build trust, make connections, and work together. That’s where we believe the next chapter of AI should begin.”
Peng told Crunchbase News via email that humans will spend the majority of compute capital for training models.
Huge seed rounds for AI
Although huge fundraising rounds are not unusual in the artificial intelligence space, Humans&’s fundraising is considered one of the largest fundraising rounds ever. The largest, however, was raised by Thinking Machine Laboratory last year. Launched and led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Muratiand joined by AI heavyweights from Meta, OpenAI, Google and Mistral AIthe San Francisco-based company announced last year a 2 billion dollars Andreessen Horowitz-funding led by a valuation of $10 billion. This was by far the largest seed cycle in the Crunchbase dataset.
Crunchbase data showed that early-stage investors poured money into AI startups in 2025 at an even more exuberant pace than in 2024, which was already a record. More than 41% of the $38.4 billion invested in global seed funding in 2025 went to companies in AI-focused industry categories, according to data from Crunchbase. This was an increase from 30% in 2024.
The numbers have also increased. As of December 12, per Crunchbase, just over $15 billion has been spent on AI-focused startup rounds, up about 50% from 2024. Below, we look at the total and share of AI investments over the past six years.
It was also a banner year for some really, really huge seed rounds. By this we mean funding of $100 million or more – once unheard of, but now not so rare.
We have kept all the data from these agreements with American startups for simpler control. But even with this limit, the total was enormous: exceeding $3.6 billion in 2025, as of December 12, a new record.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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