United

2026

Apple

Hark’s founder Brett Adcock, who also founded Figure AI, earlier today announced that the firm had completed a Parkway Venture Capital-ed Series A round that attracted $700 million at a $6 billion valuation from other tech giants, like NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), AMD Ventures, Intel Capital (NASDAQ: INTC), Qualcomm Ventures (NASDAQ: QCOM), and Salesforce Ventures (NYSE: CRM).
Hark’s CEO, Brett Adcock, <a href="https://x.com/adcock_brett/status/2057462134989263047" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">said</a> the money will be used to scale its GPU infrastructure, grow its team from 70 to 200 engineers, and design new AI hardware. The company wants to build “personal intelligence” that is more advanced than basic chatbots; something with memory and vision.
The <a href="https://www.cryptopolitan.com/oracle-sinks-3-ai-funding-plan-debt-fears/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">scale of the funding</a> is the latest evidence of the backing ambitious AI hardware and model builders are attracting. AI startups raised $255.5 billion globally in the first quarter of the year, surpassing the total amount raised in the entire year of 2025.&nbsp;
<figure class="wp-caption alignnone"><img src="https://www.cryptopolitan.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/AI-funding.webp" alt="Hark hits $6B valuation as Parkway Venture Capital leads $700M with NVIDIA, AMD" width="974" height="644">
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 AI funding in Q1 2026 has already surpassed 2025 totals. Source: PitchBook
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<h3 id="span-hark-enters-the-ai-competition-lane-span">Hark enters the AI competition lane</h3>
Hark’s pitch to investors is that its AI models will be run on hardware built for true intelligence, and the funding round shows that while “frontier model” companies take most of the cash, there is a massive need for AI infrastructure and compute.&nbsp;
Unlike many AI labs that focus only on the software models, Hark focuses on hardware and vertical integration. Hark’s system will have persistent memory of the user’s life and can listen, see, and interact with the world in real time. The company plans to release AI-native hardware devices designed specifically for their AI.
Adcock also hinted that the company is working on a family of AI devices, both for personal use and for the home. The company assembled a team of experts from Apple, Meta, Google, Tesla, and Amazon, and operates on the same campus as Figure, which Adcock owns, allowing it to leverage synergies in robotics where AI enhancements are already in use.&nbsp;
Gartner recently reported that global spending on data centers will grow nearly 56% in 2026, surpassing $788 billion.&nbsp;
OpenAI is set to unveil its first hardware device in the second half of 2026, developed in partnership with former Apple design chief Jony Ive. Apple is also reportedly developing an AI wearable pin equipped with two cameras and three microphones, and is aiming to release smart glasses by the end of 2026, rivaling Meta’s popular Ray-Bans.&nbsp;
<h3 id="span-ai-fundraising-has-set-a-new-record-span">AI fundraising has set a new record&nbsp;</h3>
AI fundraising was crazy in 2025; the numbers from the first three months of 2026 are simply unhinged. PitchBook reports that AI startups raised $255.5 billion globally in Q1 2026. That single quarter has already surpassed the total for all of 2025, which was $254.4 billion.
The first two weeks of 2026 alone saw more than 200 AI-related deals totaling over $25 billion. Most of this money went to three well-known companies: OpenAI, <a href="https://www.cryptopolitan.com/anthropic-ai-alpha-with-latest-hire/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Anthropic</a>, and xAI. Their massive rounds alone made up over 67% of all AI funding in the quarter.&nbsp;
A <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">report from 36Kr.com</a>, which covers both European and Asian markets, noted that the United States absorbed 81% of global AI venture dollars in Q1 2026, up from just 55% a year earlier.&nbsp;
The same report highlighted that sovereign wealth funds such as Singapore’s GIC and Temasek, and the Qatar Investment Authority, have become major “kingmakers” in AI, co-leading giant rounds for Anthropic and OpenAI because traditional venture firms cannot write $10 billion or $30 billion checks alone.
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Hark hits $6B valuation as Parkway Venture Capital leads $700M with NVIDIA, AMD

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