Hark

Hark is an American artificial intelligence lab founded in 2025 by Brett Adcock, the founder and chief executive of Figure AI and the prior founder of Archer Aviation and Vettery. The company is building multimodal end-to-end AI models, hardware devices, and interfaces intended to function together as a single consumer personal-intelligence product. As of April 2026, Hark has approximately 45 employees, has been seeded with $100 million of Adcock's personal capital, and plans to release its first models in summer 2026.

At a glance

• Founded: 2025. Public unveiling March 24, 2026 after eight months in stealth.
• Status: Private. Self-funded by founder Brett Adcock.
• Funding: $100 million personal investment by Adcock. No outside venture capital disclosed.
• CEO: Brett Adcock (founder, also chief executive of Figure AI).
• Other notable leadership: Abidur Chowdhury (Director of Design, formerly at Apple on iPhone industrial design).
• Open weights: None disclosed.
• Flagship products: First multimodal models targeted for summer 2026 release. Companion hardware device and interface in development.

Origins

Hark was founded quietly in 2025 by Brett Adcock, who continues to serve simultaneously as founder and chief executive of Figure AI, the humanoid-robotics company he started in May 2022. Adcock's career prior to Hark spans three earlier companies: Vettery, the AI-augmented recruiting marketplace he co-founded in 2013 and sold to Adecco for approximately $100 million in 2018; Archer Aviation, the electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft company he co-founded in 2018 and that listed on the New York Stock Exchange through a SPAC merger in 2021; and Cover, an AI security company founded in October 2023.

The lab operated in stealth for approximately eight months before its public unveiling on March 24, 2026. By that date Hark had assembled approximately 45 engineers, designers, and researchers, with named hires recruited from Apple, Meta AI / FAIR, Google, Tesla AI, and Amazon. The team works on a shared campus with Adcock's other companies and has access to compute infrastructure that the public unveiling described as scaling to thousands of Nvidia GPUs by April 2026.

The naming of Hark and the choice of a self-funded structure rather than venture capital reflect Adcock's stated intent to retain editorial control over the product roadmap. The $100 million seed represents one of the largest single-founder personal investments in a frontier-adjacent AI lab on record.

Mission and strategy

Hark's stated mission is to build "a futuristic interface to artificial intelligence" through the integrated development of models, hardware devices, and software interfaces. Adcock has framed the product vision in reference to fictional personal-AI assistants, naming Jarvis from the Iron Man films and Samantha from Her as comparators. In his founding memo, Adcock described systems that "anticipate, adapt, and genuinely care about the people using them" with persistent memory of users' lives and the ability to listen and observe in real time across speech, text, vision, and ambient context.

The strategic premise combines three threads. First, vertical integration of models and hardware in the manner of Apple's product approach, in contrast to the pure-software model layers offered by OpenAI and Anthropic. Second, a consumer-personal-intelligence positioning that targets the same long-term opportunity as Humane-style ambient devices but with a foundational-model team behind it. Third, a deliberate decoupling from Figure AI's industrial-robotics roadmap, while sharing physical campus and infrastructure resources between the two companies. Adcock has stated that there are no plans to merge Hark and Figure.

The competitive premise is that the consumer personal-AI device category, which has so far produced limited commercial traction across earlier attempts, becomes viable when the underlying models, hardware, and interfaces are designed together by a single team rather than assembled from third-party components.

Models and products

• First Hark models. Targeted for release in summer 2026. Described publicly as multimodal end-to-end systems with persistent memory, real-time speech and vision capability, and integration with the planned hardware device.
• Hardware device. A physical product intended to act as the primary interface between users and the underlying Hark models. Specific form factor has not been disclosed.
• Interface software. A software layer intended to bind the models and hardware into a coherent personal-intelligence experience.
• Training infrastructure. Hark's models are reportedly being trained in part using Figure's humanoid-robot hardware as data-collection platforms, an unusual cross-company asset arrangement that gives Hark access to embodied data at scale.

No models, hardware devices, or developer APIs have been publicly released as of April 2026.

Benchmarks and standing

Hark has not released a model and is not represented on the standardized capability leaderboards as of April 2026. The company's standing rests on its founder's track record across four prior ventures, the disclosed senior team, the reported infrastructure investment, and the unusual arrangement that gives Hark access to Figure-derived embodied training data.

Leadership

As of April 2026, Hark's named leadership includes:

• Brett Adcock, founder. Also chief executive of Figure AI. Public face for capital strategy, product vision, and recruiting. Estimated personal net worth of approximately $19 billion as of February 2026.
• Abidur Chowdhury, Director of Design. Industrial designer previously at Apple, where he worked on iPhone industrial design including the iPhone Air program. Public-facing technical hire at the March 2026 unveiling.

The company's broader senior research and engineering leadership has not been disclosed by name. Public reporting attributes the team's composition to recruits from Apple, Meta AI, Google, Tesla, and Amazon. The simultaneous chief-executive role at Figure AI is unusual; how Adcock divides time and decision-making authority between the two companies has not been described publicly.

Funding and backers

Hark's funding history through April 2026 consists of a single $100 million seed investment, fully provided by founder Brett Adcock from his personal capital. No outside venture-capital investors, strategic corporate investors, or sovereign-wealth participants have been disclosed.

The self-funded structure is consistent with Adcock's stated preference for retaining editorial control over the product roadmap and the long product-development timeline he has projected publicly. Whether Hark will accept outside capital on the path to a product launch is one of the open questions for 2026 and 2027.

The cross-company relationship with Figure AI provides Hark with shared campus and infrastructure access without explicit equity entanglement. The reported deployment of thousands of Nvidia GPUs by April 2026 indicates that compute capacity is being financed from the founder's personal capital rather than via outside compute partners or sovereign-backed deals of the scale seen at OpenAI and Anthropic.

Industry position

Hark occupies a structurally distinctive position among Insurgent labs as of April 2026. The combination of a single named billionaire founder, a self-funded $100 million capitalization, vertical integration of models and hardware, and a consumer-personal-intelligence positioning is not directly comparable to any other lab in the cohort. The closest structural peers are the founder-led, vertically integrated consumer-AI ventures pursued by former senior researchers at the major frontier labs, but most of those companies (such as Thinking Machines Lab and Safe Superintelligence) have raised substantial outside capital and remain pure-software lab structures.

The strategic risks are substantial. Hark has not yet released a model, hardware device, or interface, and the consumer personal-AI device category has produced limited commercial proof points across earlier attempts. The dual-CEO structure with Figure AI introduces management bandwidth questions, and the absence of outside capital limits the speed at which Hark can scale beyond Adcock's personal commitment.

The strategic strengths are equally distinctive. Adcock's track record of building Figure into a multibillion-dollar humanoid-robotics company since 2022 indicates execution capacity in capital-intensive deep-tech. The cross-company access to Figure's embodied data is an unusual training-data asset for a consumer-AI lab. The named hires from Apple's industrial-design team and the senior model-research recruits provide credibility on both the hardware and software sides of the integrated-product premise.

Competitive landscape

Hark competes with several Frontier and Insurgent labs:

• OpenAI. OpenAI's reported hardware partnership with the team led by former Apple designer Jony Ive targets the same consumer personal-AI device opportunity. The largest direct competitor on the integrated-models-and-hardware thesis.
• Apple. The Apple Intelligence framework integrates ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini into iOS and macOS rather than developing its own foundation models. Hark's vertical-integration premise is a direct alternative to Apple's third-party-LLM approach.
• Humane and similar ambient-device companies. Earlier attempts at consumer personal-AI hardware. Public commercial traction has been limited.
• Figure AI. Adcock's own humanoid-robotics company. Not a competitor in product market terms but shares physical-AI training data and personnel through the cross-company relationship.
• Anthropic and Google DeepMind. Frontier-model competitors at the model-capability layer, against whom Hark's first 2026 models will be benchmarked when released.

Outlook

Several open questions affect Hark's trajectory in 2026 and 2027:

• The first model release in summer 2026, including its capability profile and how it benchmarks against frontier-tier comparators.
• The hardware device's form factor, launch timing, and pricing.
• Whether Hark accepts outside capital, and at what valuation if so. Public reporting has cited speculation around a potential $4 billion mark for a future round, but no such round has closed.
• The structure and durability of the cross-company arrangement with Figure AI, particularly around the use of Figure-derived embodied training data.
• Adcock's bandwidth across the simultaneous Hark and Figure AI chief-executive roles as Hark approaches its first product launch.
• Hiring momentum from Apple, Meta, Google, Tesla, and Amazon, and any senior research-leadership hires that have not yet been disclosed publicly.

Sources

• Hark Launches AI Lab Building Futuristic Interface to Artificial Intelligence. Hark's public unveiling, March 24, 2026.
• TechCrunch: Meet the former Apple designer building a new AI interface at Hark. Profile of Director of Design Abidur Chowdhury and the founding team.
• The Information: Figure CEO Brett Adcock Launches New AI Lab With $100 Million in Funding. Initial reporting on the $100 million personal-funding structure.
• Brett Adcock Launches Hark AI Lab with $100M Personal Investment for Integrated Personal Intelligence. Coverage of the founding memo and product framing.
• Brett Adcock on Wikipedia. Career history including Vettery, Archer Aviation, Figure AI, Cover, and Hark.
• The Man Who Wants to Write the Operating System for Physical Work. Profile of Adcock and the multi-company portfolio.