Figure AI founder Brett Adcock unveils Hark, a new AI interface backed by $100 million

Former Apple Designer Joins Ambitious AI Hardware Venture

Brett Adcock, the Figure AI founder known for launching humanoid robotics company Figure and electric aircraft startup Archer Aviation, has unveiled his latest venture: Hark, an AI lab that aims to fundamentally reshape how humans interact with intelligent software 1

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. The company plans to design multi-modal end-to-end models, AI hardware, and their interfaces in tandem to deliver what it describes as a "seamless end-to-end personal intelligence product" 1

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. Backed by $100 million in personal seed money from Adcock, Hark has already assembled a team of 45 to 50 engineers and designers recruited from Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Tesla 1

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The company's most notable hire is Abidur Chowdhury, who served as a design lead at Apple and was credited with leading the design team behind the iPhone Air and other recent models 1

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. The London-born industrial designer left Apple last fall after meeting with Adcock and embracing his vision for a new AI interface that moves beyond existing platforms 1

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. Chowdhury was prominent enough at Apple to narrate the iPhone Air product announcement in September before his abrupt departure 3

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Building Intelligence That Anticipates User Needs

Hark's approach centers on creating a system with persistent memory that can listen, see, and interact with the world in real time, working as a collaborative partner rather than traditional software 1

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. "My view is simple: today's AI models aren't nearly intelligent enough, they feel quite dumb, and the devices we use to access them are fundamentally pre-AI," Adcock wrote in a January internal memo 1

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. The entrepreneur envisions systems that "anticipate, adapt, and genuinely care about the people using them," comparing his vision to sci-fi assistants like Jarvis or Her 1

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The foundation models will focus on speech, computer use, and memory, with Adcock seeing an opportunity to improve on existing large language models that he believes are hampered by limited personalization 2

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. The technology aims to create a proactive system that not only knows a user's calendar, preferences, and activity but can anticipate their needs without relying on prompts 2

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. Adcock wants to build "intelligence that lets you offload your mental workload into a system that begins to think like you and sometimes ahead of you" 4

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Chowdhury points to everyday frustrations like filling out forms, sharing information between devices, or planning travel and home renovations as tasks that consume entire evenings and create background anxiety during work hours 1

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. "We genuinely believe that all of the small tasks that pile up to be kind of gargantuan things today can be sort of automated from our lives," he said 1

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A Family of AI Devices Beyond Smartphones and Wearables

While details remain intentionally sparse, Adcock revealed that Hark is working on a family of AI devices for both personal use and the home, distinct from existing handsets, wearables, and smart glasses 2

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. "We do believe that there's more than one device to rule the world here," he told Bloomberg News, adding that the goal is for the products to feel so essential that their absence would be like "a day of lost information" 2

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Chowdhury expressed skepticism about current wearable AI platforms, stating he doesn't believe "it's appropriate to put a layer between humanity and the interfaces we use in the world," expressing similar discomfort with pins or devices with cameras 1

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. His vision suggests a different approach to integrated hardware that places intelligence at the base layer of everything users touch, rather than as an app or website at the upper layer 1

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The company expects to release its first AI models this summer, followed shortly by hardware devices designed around those systems 1

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. To accelerate development, Hark has secured a compute deal with Nvidia and expects to begin using a new cluster of thousands of NVIDIA B200 GPUs in April 1

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Competition and Connections to Humanoid Robots

Hark enters a competitive landscape where OpenAI is collaborating with former Apple design chief Jony Ive on what has also been described as a family of AI devices 2

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. Meta is pushing AI-enabled smart glasses, while earlier hardware attempts like the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1 have been notable flops 2

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There's corporate synergy between Hark and Adcock's humanoid robotics company Figure AI, which was valued at $39 billion in 2025 2

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. Hark's models are already being trained on Figure's robots, replacing third-party voice integration, though Adcock says he has no near-term plans to merge the companies under a parent entity 1

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. The work on AI agents at Hark will be "highly relevant to scaling humanoids at Figure," Adcock noted 2

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Hark's team is expected to grow from its current 45-50 employees to between 100 and 150 by the end of summer, with all staff working on the same campus that hosts Adcock's other companies 1

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. Adcock, who has an estimated net worth of $19.1 billion from ventures including selling hiring platform Vettery in 2018 and founding Archer Aviation, is financing Hark entirely with his own capital for now 4

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