The Humane startup announces a third fundraiser, prepares its first commercial product and maintains a cult of secrecy around its ambitions. Benjamin Vincent tries to lift part of the veil.
It’s the startup everyone’s talking about right now in Silicon Valley. It is called Humane, and has just announced its third fundraising with investors such as Microsoft, LG and OpenAI, the creator of chatGPT. And yet, of Humane, we know almost nothing, or almost, apart from the identity of its two founders, two former Apple, now husband and wife: Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno.
Their philosophy: a technology around artificial intelligence, close, natural and human, hence the name of the company. And it is on this basis, or hardly more, that they have already raised 230 million dollars to invest, hire – how many are there today at Humane? Probably more than a hundred – and giving shape to what will perhaps be the next technological revolution with the promise of “joyful and almost magical” interactions according to the two founders.
A Star Trek laser badge?
Above all, we don’t know what their first commercial product will be. The only clue is a pitch to investors two years ago, a shoddy leaked presentation. She describes what looks like a small portable camera, a sort of Star Trek badge, constantly filming in front of you, which could project a laser, for example on your hand, and with which you can interact by performing certain gestures.
This is what seems to confirm, at least, a patent filed since. And therefore, a consumer product connected to a software platform in the Cloud, hence the partnership announced Wednesday with Microsoft. The goal is to be able to take artificial intelligence everywhere with you. The only official info is that the announcement is scheduled for the spring, so within a few weeks at most.
The cult of secrecy like at Apple
How to explain the secrecy around this start-up? Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno apply very precisely what they experienced at Apple: eight years for her, developing operating systems for the iPhone and Mac, and 20 years for him designing human-machine interfaces… to the point, apparently, of pulling the cover a little too much at Apple. Hence a departure in 2016 on not very good terms, it is said, and the reason why Apple would not be in the loop as an investor in this project.
The couple’s ambitions are presented, anyway, as far too big for Humane to simply be bought out and absorbed by a tech giant. Hence this 3rd round announced on Wednesday with in particular Sam Altman, one of the dads of chatGPT who invested personally then returned to the pot, but also Microsoft, the Korean LG and the car manufacturer Volvo. Everything indicates that Humane is working on a project that should, at the very least, surprise us.