Breaking News: Hark Raises $700M Series A to Build a ‘Universal’ AI Interface
What will it take to launch the first must-have AI consumer product? Maybe $700 million.
At least according to Hark, an AI lab building models and hardware for an AI personal assistant, which said on Thursday that it had raised that much in a Series A round that values it at $6 billion post-money. The mega round was led by Parkway Venture Capital, and included Align Ventures, AMD Ventures, ARK Invest, Brookfield, Greycroft, Intel Capital, Prime Movers Lab, Qualcomm Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Tamarack.
What is Hark Building?
The AI lab launched in late 2025 with $100 million of his own money to develop an agentic AI system that serves as a universal interface with the digital world. Founder and CEO, Brett Adcock, also the entrepreneur behind robotics company Figure.AI and electric aircraft builder Archer, said Hark’s goal is to release its first multi-modal models this summer.
These models will power a personal AI platform that works with existing products and services. The company expects to follow that with hardware devices built specifically for those systems. The fresh cash will be spent on recruiting top talent for hardware, product design and AI research, and securing compute and components. The company currently has 70 employees, and runs a data center with Nvidia B200 GPUs.
What Does Hark Have to Offer?
Hark’s director of design, Abidur Chowdhury (pictured above in a promo video), is excited about the potential. “I haven’t seen anything that feels like something that will really help like the normal person,” he said when TechCrunch asked him questions this week. “People are really building things to help people make software, and it’s working, but we haven’t really seen that for the normal person yet.”
“With this focus, with this great team that we have, and this round that we’ve raised, I think we can make something really special in this space,” Chowdhury said.
However, there are more questions than answers. One challenge will be providing the context of a customer’s life to an AI assistant without making the people around the user uncomfortable or violating their privacy. Wearables like Meta’s existing glasses or the forthcoming Android spectacles don’t seem to have solved this problem.
What Does This Mean for Makers and Artists?
For those in the AI ecosystem, Hark’s focus on building interfaces and native hardware rather than tools is notable. Few companies are focusing solely on this space, making Hark’s approach potentially groundbreaking.
“With this focus, with this great team that we have, and this round that we’ve raised, I think we can make something really special in this space,” Chowdhury said. He added, “I haven’t seen anything that feels like something that will really help like the normal person yet.”
Key Takeaways
- Hark raised $700M for its universal AI interface in a Series A round.
- The company is developing an agentic AI system that serves as a universal interface with the digital world.
- It plans to release multi-modal models this summer, which will power a personal AI platform.
Originally published at techcrunch.com. Curated by AI Maestro.
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