Hark hires ex-Apple designer to build a new AI interface

Former Apple industrial designer Abidur Chowdhury has joined stealth AI lab Hark to lead a “seamless end-to-end personal intelligence product.” The project targets a next-gen AI interface that goes beyond chatbots, combining multi-modal models, specialized hardware, and a redesigned interface from the ground up. Hark’s co-founder Brett Adcock says today’s AI feels “quite dumb,” and the devices accessing it are still “pre-AI.” Hark plans persistent memory systems that can listen, see, and interact in real time. Chowdhury argues the future user experience should be personalized for each individual, not simplified for everyone, and he criticizes adding AI as an “app or website” layer. Chowdhury is also skeptical of current wearable AI approaches such as camera-equipped “pins” or smart glasses, warning against placing a layer between people and their real-world interfaces. Instead, Hark focuses on automating everyday administrative tasks, like travel booking and home planning, to reduce accumulated cognitive load. The team includes ~45 engineers and designers (including former Meta AI researchers and Apple/Tesla designers). Hark expects to start using a new cluster of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs in April 2025, with an initial AI models release targeted for summer 2025. Funding is reportedly $100 million in personal seed capital from Brett Adcock. Hark operates on the same campus as Adcock’s humanoid robotics company Figure, with Hark’s models trained on Figure robots, though the companies won’t merge.