Hark raises $700M+ to build ‘personalized intelligence’ devices

Hark Inc., a startup developing artificial intelligence devices for the consumer market, today announced that it has raised more than $700 million in funding.

Parkway Venture Capital led the Series A round. It was joined by Nvidia Corp., Intel Capital, AMD Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and several others. The company is now worth $6 billion.

Hark previously raised $100 million from founder and Chief Executive Officer Brett Adcock. The entrepreneur is also the CEO of Figure AI Inc., a startup that develops humanoid robots capable of performing household chores. Adcock earlier founded flying taxi company Archer Aviation Inc.

The company is developing a line of custom AI models that it says will provide “advanced personalized intelligence.” The algorithms will feature a multimodal architecture and persistent memory that will enable them to save user preferences. They will use the stored information to proactively generate task suggestions.

Hark plans to ship its models with a line of AI-optimized devices. The gadgets are designed to “interact naturally with people and the real world.” The company positions them as an alternative to traditional ways of accessing AI services.

A demo video on Hark’s website indicates that its AI models can reserve restaurant tables, make e-commerce purchases and perform research. There’s also support for voice commands. It’s unclear whether the models will be capable of automating business tasks.

Companies often run frontier multimodal models in the cloud. If Hark’s devices are adopted by a significant number of users, the cost of performing cloud-based inference could become prohibitively high. As a result, it’s possible that the company will opt to build less advanced, more cost-efficient models that can run locally on user devices.

Last year, Google LLC released a multimodal model optimized for devices with limited processing capacity. Gemma 3n includes 6 billion parameters, but uses significantly fewer parameters in practice to reduce hardware requirements. A module called MatFormer enables developers to disable parts of the models that aren’t needed for an app.

It’s possible Hark will equip its algorithms with similar optimizations. The company plans to roll out its first models this summer. Its consumer devices will launch at an unspecified later date.

According to TechCrunch, Hark will use its newly raised capital to hire more hardware engineers, AI researchers and designers. The company also plans to upgrade its AI training infrastructure. it trains its models using an on-premises cluster of Blackwell B200 graphics cards. 

“We’re building the AI that everyone deserves but no one has built yet — one that actually knows you, speaks your language, is highly personalized, and lives on hardware made for you,” Adcock said.

Hark’s product line will face competition from OpenAI Group PBC, which is also gearing up to enter the consumer hardware market. It’s reportedly working on a screenless AI device that could debut early next year. Recent reports indicate that OpenAI may also launch a smart speaker, a smart lamp and wearables. 

Image: Hark