Artificial intelligence startup Simile has secured $100 million in a fresh funding round to help businesses predict human behavior, ranging from identifying products customers are likely to buy to forecasting questions analysts may raise during earnings calls.
Notably, the round, scheduled to be announced on Thursday, was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, A*, and Hanabi Capital. In addition, prominent AI leaders such as Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy also invested in the round. However, Simile chose not to disclose its valuation.
Meanwhile, Simile emerged from stealth this week after spending the past seven months building an AI model trained on interviews with hundreds of real people about their lives. At the same time, the company enriched its system with historical transaction data and text drawn from scientific journals focused on behavioral experiments.
According to the startup, Simile aims to leverage this technology to anticipate decisions individuals might make in specific situations. To achieve this, the company constructs simulations populated by AI agents that mirror the preferences and tendencies of real people.
Importantly, this novel approach offers companies an alternative to traditional focus groups. For example, CVS Health Corp. has already been testing Simile’s platform to guide decisions on which products to stock and how to display them in stores.
Beyond retail, Simile believes its technology can also help organizations prepare for analyst questions on earnings calls or predict reactions to corporate announcements by analyzing historical earnings calls and research reports.
At the leadership level, Simile is led by co-founders Joon Park, Michael Bernstein, Percy Liang, and Lainie Yallen, all of whom have academic ties to Stanford University. Notably, Bernstein is a co-author of the influential ImageNet project, which established a foundational benchmark for modern computer vision systems.
Simile’s $100 million funding round underscores growing investor confidence in AI-driven behavioral prediction. By combining real human insights with large-scale simulations, the startup positions itself to reshape how companies understand consumers, anticipate market reactions, and make strategic decisions—potentially redefining the future of enterprise intelligence.
