As Humane struggles to find a foothold in the nascent world of AI hardware, two of its top employees have left the company to form their own startup, which in some ways mirrors Humane's founding story: Founders Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri left Apple after years of work to start their own company.
Former Humane Inc. head of strategic partnerships Brooke Hartley Moy and head of product engineering Ken Cocienda have wisely distanced themselves from the dangerous world of hardware with Infactory, a sort of fact-checking search engine. The project is still in its early stages, but the founders spoke to TechCrunch about their plans, a dramatic shift from Humane Inc.'s pre-launch secrecy.
Naturally, AI will play a key role in the project: For one, Kocienda, a 16-year veteran of Apple, started working in the field well before Humane launched, and for another, it's nearly impossible to launch a startup in 2024 without an AI pitch up front.
According to Hartley Moy and Kocienda, who are now CEO and CTO, respectively, what sets Infactory apart is that it knows when to use AI, and more importantly, when not to. It leverages large language models (LLMs) to create a more natural language interface with the platform, so users don't have to type in different word combinations to get their intended results.
However, no AI will be implemented in the results themselves. Unlike Google's current search results, which prioritize Gemini summaries of information, Infactory will pull information directly from trusted resources, including citations. While some will no doubt continue to question the accuracy of certain sources, the new service won't create the same kind of hallucinatory symptoms that current generative AI services suffer from.
Infactory will offer subscription pricing aimed at enterprise customers rather than consumers. Potential clients for the service include newsrooms and research facilities. The service will focus solely on data at launch, rather than venturing into much more objective subjects like politics.
Kocienda gives the example of a financial publication trying to directly compare the annual financial statements of two different companies. That's a relatively easy search, but it could be something that's hard to find. To give a more familiar example, say you want to compare how many devices Apple and Samsung have sold over the past five years. The service will find and collate that information for you.
When launching a fact-checking engine, you want to ensure that information is drawn from the most accurate sources available.
“Our goal here is to be selective in terms of partnerships,” Hartley-Moy says, “and not all data partners are equal. The reason we're focusing on data vendors rather than content providers is because when it comes to things that are more calculational and more fact-based, it's their job to ensure that they're accurate.”
Infactory has raised pre-seed funding, though the founders declined to disclose the amount or investors. Hartley-Moy said the seed funding will be the focus for the next “six to 18 months.”
The founders acknowledged that they left Humain because their former employer was experiencing post-launch difficulties: After the highly anticipated AI Pin was panned and consumer interest waned, Humain laid off 10 people and was recently rumored to be considering a sale.
Ultimately, though, both Infactory co-founders deny that their decision to start their own company was a direct result of Humane's widely publicized plight.
“Hardware is hard,” Kocienda told TechCrunch. “Starting a company is hard. It takes a lot of courage and special skills and personality to take something that you've spent your life building and put it out there for the world to appreciate, as we're learning. I have a lot of respect for founders and people who are willing to take those risks. I think it's good for the industry as a whole to have people who are willing to take those risks, so that the whole pace of innovation isn't dictated by a handful of conglomerates. I like the idea of startups that are willing to build new hardware and software solutions.”
As for Infactory's own launch, Hartley Moy says it's expected to happen within the next few months.