Figure AI CEO Self-Funds $100 Million AI Lab Hark, Former Apple iPhone Air Designer Joins

Gate News reports that on March 25, humanoid robot company Figure CEO Brett Adcock announced the launch of a new AI laboratory, Hark, with the goal of creating “the world’s most advanced personal intelligence.” Hark will deeply integrate self-developed multimodal models with custom hardware to build a universal interaction interface between humans and machines. Hark has been operating in secret for 8 months, funded personally by Adcock with $100 million, and Forbes estimates his net worth at $19.1 billion.

Adcock told Bloomberg that Hark is developing “a series of AI devices, both for personal and home use,” which will differ from existing smartphones, wearables, and smart glasses. The first batch of AI models is planned to be released this summer, with hardware to follow.

Regarding the team, former Apple industrial designer Abidur Chowdhury has been appointed head of design. He worked at Apple for seven years, contributing to the design of the iPhone and Mac product lines, including the recent iPhone Air. The hardware team also includes senior Apple employees David Narajowski and Dave Wilkes. For AI research, the team has recruited several senior researchers from Meta’s Superintelligence Lab. Currently, the team has about 45 members and is expected to grow to 100 in the first half of the year, with members also coming from Google, Amazon, and Tesla. Hark has reached a computing power agreement with NVIDIA, with thousands of GPUs coming online next month for model training.

Adcock is a serial entrepreneur. His company Figure, founded in 2022, recently reached a valuation of $39 billion. He has also previously founded recruitment platform Vettery (sold for $100 million), vertical takeoff and landing electric aircraft company Archer, and weapons detection firm Cover. Figure will operate independently.