Simile raises $100 million to build AI simulations that predict human…

Team S · 2026-05-07T14:57:32.000Z

Simile, a Stanford spin-out that predicts human behaviour using AI simulations, has emerged from stealth with $100 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, A*, and Hanabi Capital. AI luminaries Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy also joined as investors. The company did not disclose a valuation. Simile was co-founded by Joon Sung Park (CEO), Michael Bernstein (CPO), Percy Liang (Chief Scientist), and Elaina Yallen (CCO). The team's academic credentials are foundational to the company's thesis. Park and Bernstein authored the landmark 2023 "Generative Agents" paper, which placed 25 autonomous AI agents in a simulated town called Smallville and demonstrated that AI can simulate believable human social behaviour — the research won Best Paper at ACM UIST. Liang coined the term "foundation model" and co-founded Together.ai . Bernstein is a Stanford CS professor and co-author of the ImageNet project. The company spent seven months in stealth developing a foundation model trained on deep interviews with hundreds of real people about their lives and decision-making, combined with historical transaction data and text from behavioural science journals. The model populates AI simulations with agents based on real individuals, enabling organisations to stress-test decisions on synthetic populations before acting in the real world. Applications include predicting consumer purchasing decisions, anticipating analyst questions on corporate earnings calls — where early tests correctly forecast eight out of ten questions — and assessing reactions to product launches or policy announcements. Early customers include CVS Health, Gallup, Suntory Beverage & Food, and Wealthfront. CVS has used the platform for inventory decisions and earnings call preparation. The company positions itself as an alternative to traditional focus groups and market testing, targeting the $153 billion global insights industry. The $100 million will be used to scale the platform and expand commercial deployment.

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Simile raises $100 million to build AI simulations that predict human… | Newnex