humans& secures $480 million seed round as new AI lab backed by 500 Global and frontier talent

A newly launched AI lab, humans&, has emerged with a $480 million seed round and backing from 500 Global, positioning itself around human-centric AI as governments, educators, and employers grapple with how advanced models shape collaboration, skills, and work.

humans& has launched as a new frontier AI lab after closing a $480 million seed funding round, with investment led by 500 Global. The lab brings together researchers and engineers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, xAI, Meta, Stanford University, and MIT, positioning itself around what it describes as human-centered AI development.

The scale of the funding and the seniority of the founding team highlight continued investor confidence in frontier AI research, while signaling a shift toward models designed to operate within real-world social, educational, and organizational settings.

Investment announcement shared on LinkedIn

The investment was shared on LinkedIn by Iris Sun, a tech ventures investor at 500 Global, who wrote, “Thrilled to announce our investment in humans&’s $480M seed round.” She added that the company was “building AI for the next generation of humanity,” and pointed to the founding team’s experience across frontier labs and academia as central to the decision.

In a separate post, humans& said it was introducing itself as “a human-centric frontier AI lab,” stating that, “At its best, AI should serve as a deeper connective tissue that strengthens organizations and communities.” The company said this approach would require changes to how models are trained and how people interact with AI systems.

Founders outline human-centered focus

Co-founder Andi Peng also took to LinkedIn to introduce the lab, writing, “At humans&, we are building AI that centers human interaction, collaboration, and coordination.” She said this vision would not “simply fall out of scaling up training,” and argued that it required deliberate innovation across long-horizon memory, multi-agent systems, and user understanding.

Noah Goodman, co-founder of humans& and a professor of computer science and psychology at Stanford University, described the lab’s mission in human terms. He wrote, “We need an AI that will bring us together rather than making us more isolated,” and added, “We need an AI that will join us in dignified work rather than replacing us.”

Goodman said the lab aimed to build what he described as “humanist AI,” focused on collaboration, trust, and shared outcomes rather than engagement or automation alone.

The company said it plans to tightly integrate product development alongside model research, with the goal of ensuring real-world use cases inform system design from the outset. Members of the founding team emphasized experience building models and products already deployed at global scale.

For the EdTech and skills sectors, the launch of humans& reflects a broader shift in AI development toward examining how advanced systems shape learning behaviors, teamwork, and human judgment, rather than focusing solely on performance benchmarks.

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