Brett Adcock, the serial entrepreneur best known for founding the humanoid robotics company Figure and electric aircraft maker Archer Aviation, has raised more than $700 million in a Series A round for his latest venture, Hark. The round values the AI hardware startup at $6 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The funding round comes roughly two months after Hark emerged from stealth mode, placing it among the highest-valued AI hardware bets before it has shipped a single product. Parkway Venture Capital led the round, with an investor list that reads like a who's who of the chip and cloud ecosystem: Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Brookfield, ARK Invest, Greycroft, Prime Movers Lab, Align Ventures, and Tamarack Global.
Adcock's Track Record
Adcock founded Hark in late 2025 with $100 million of his own money, drawing on a career of founding companies that have gone public, been acquired, or become among the best-funded private operators in their categories. He co-founded Vettery, an online recruiting marketplace that was sold to Adecco for $100 million. He founded Archer Aviation, which went public via a SPAC merger in 2021 and is now one of the leading players in the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft market. He also founded Cover, a school-security company, and remains the CEO of Figure, the humanoid robotics company that has raised over $1.5 billion and is working on general-purpose robots for industrial labor.
Adcock's history of taking hardware-heavy concepts from concept to production is a central part of the thesis for Hark. Unlike many founders in the AI hardware space who come from software backgrounds, Adcock has navigated the complexities of supply chains, manufacturing, and regulatory certifications at both Archer and Figure. That experience may prove critical when the company eventually reveals its hardware form factor.
What Hark Is Building
Despite the massive funding and lofty valuation, Hark has been relatively vague about what it is actually building. The company describes itself as developing a "personal AI platform" that pairs in-house foundation models, software, and native hardware with new interfaces, rather than focusing on a single layer of the technology stack. According to its March announcement on BusinessWire, Hark intends to release its first multi-modal models this summer. The company has not disclosed headcount, the specific hardware form factor, target price, launch market, or a customer pipeline.
The integrated approach sets Hark apart from many competitors who specialize in just one part of the stack—either chips, models, or applications. By designing all three in-house from day one, Adcock believes Hark can optimize performance, power efficiency, and user experience in ways that are not possible when piecing together third-party components. This is a model that Apple has successfully executed with its iPhone and M-series chips, but it is far from proven in the nascent category of personal AI devices.
A Category Marked by Failures
The AI hardware category that Hark is entering is small, expensive, and has been littered with high-profile failures. Humane's AI Pin, launched with massive hype in 2024, became a cautionary tale for the industry—criticized for its limited functionality, poor battery life, and confusing interface. The Rabbit R1, another AI gadget that aimed to simplify smartphone interactions, also struggled to gain traction after its initial buzz faded. Even Apple, which has a hardware distribution machine unlike any other company, has spent the past year wrestling with how to define its on-device AI offering. The company's "Apple Intelligence" push, unveiled at WWDC in 2024, has been slow to roll out and has yet to produce a compelling new hardware category.
The challenge for Hark is that building a personal AI device is not just about hardware and software integration; it is about solving a user need that is not already addressed by existing products. Smartphones, smartwatches, wireless earbuds, and even smart glasses have captured many of the use cases that AI hardware startups aim for. The question is what a new device can do that is distinctly better.
Why Investors Are Betting Big
The involvement of Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm on the cap table suggests that these chip giants see Hark as a potential path to new demand for their silicon. For Nvidia, which dominates the data center AI chip market, personal AI devices represent a new growth vector beyond cloud computing. By investing early, they ensure that Hark can access the most advanced manufacturing nodes and supply allocation—often the binding constraint for AI hardware companies in 2026 when demand for cutting-edge chips far exceeds supply.
Furthermore, Adcock's ability to raise $100 million from his own pocket signaled to investors that he was fully committed. That initial funding allowed Hark to hire a team, begin chip design, and start training models before seeking outside capital. The Series A round buys time for the company to remain opaque about specifics for a while longer while they work toward product-market fit.
Background on the AI Hardware Landscape
The personal AI device space has seen several waves of interest and disillusionment. In the early 2020s, companies like Meta (with its Ray-Ban smart glasses), Amazon (with Alexa-powered wearables), and even Google (with Pixel Buds) experimented with on-device AI, but none created a breakout success. The real breakthrough came when large language models like GPT-4 and Google's Gemini demonstrated the ability to reason and converse, sparking hopes that a device could serve as a constant AI assistant.
Startups like Humane and Rabbit tried to capture that opportunity, but they faced fundamental challenges: insufficient processing power on the device, latency when relying on cloud connections, and battery life constraints. Hark's strategy of designing custom silicon and models in parallel aims to address these issues. By optimizing the entire pipeline, the company hopes to deliver real-time, responsive AI that can work offline for many tasks, with cloud connectivity for more complex queries.
Another dimension is privacy. Adcock has hinted in interviews that Hark will emphasize on-device processing to protect user data, a selling point that could differentiate it from cloud-centric rivals. This aligns with the broader industry trend toward local AI, as seen in Apple's move to run some AI models on-device and the rise of small language models that can fit in a smartphone's neural engine.
Challenges Ahead
Even with a $700 million war chest and a board of strategic investors, Hark faces steep hurdles. First, defining a form factor that users will want to wear or carry. Rumors suggest the device could be a pendant, a badge, or a pair of glasses, but no official information has been released. Second, achieving price parity with smartphones or wearables—consumers are unlikely to pay a premium for an accessory that overlaps with their phone's capabilities. Third, building a developer ecosystem to create unique applications that justify the device's existence.
The timeline is also aggressive. If Hark's first multi-modal models arrive this summer, the hardware likely won't appear until the end of 2026 or early 2027. By that time, competitors like Meta, Apple, and Google may have refined their own offerings, and consumer interest in dedicated AI gadgets could wane or shift direction.
Nevertheless, Adcock's past successes at navigating early-stage chaos have given investors confidence. Archer Aviation went from a concept to flying prototypes in record time, and Figure recently demonstrated its humanoid robot performing tasks autonomously in a BMW factory. Those milestones suggest Adcock knows how to move from promise to delivery.
Ultimately, the Series A round gives Hark the financial runway to remain in stealth mode for as long as needed. Whether that runway leads to a product that consumers will embrace, or becomes another cautionary tale, will be determined in the coming months as the first models hit the market and the hardware form factor emerges.
Source: TNW | Investors-Funding News