Two senior executives from the consumer electronics company Humane departed to create their own venture amid its difficulties in the quickly growing AI hardware market. This trend is similar to the beginnings of Humane, when the company's founders, Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, left Apple to start their own business. With their new firm, Infactory, which focuses on AI-powered fact-checking, former Humane Strategic Partnerships Lead Brooke Hartley Moy and Head of Product Engineering Ken Kocienda have decided to stay out of the hardware sector.
Infactory is an AI-powered fact-checking search engine that is still in its early phases of development. With Kocienda’s extensive experience at Apple, the startup integrates AI in a way that is almost essential for any new venture in 2024. But the company distinguishes itself by using AI strategically. AI won't affect the search results, but large language models (LLMs) will improve the natural language interface. Infactory will deliver information straight from vetted sources, including citations, in contrast to Google's AI-generated summaries, avoiding the errors frequently found in existing AI services.
Newsrooms and research institutes are the target market for the startup, which uses a subscription-based business model to target enterprise customers. The service will initially only address statistics, avoiding subjective subjects like politics. For example, it may let a financial journal compare the annual financial statements of several companies or offer information on sales of Apple and Samsung devices over the last five years.
Hartley Moy stressed the value of carefully chosen alliances to guarantee reliable data gathering. Pre-seed money has been secured by Infactory; however, the details are still unknown. The company plans to pursue seed capital over the course of the following six to eighteen months.
Their departure from Humane comes amid the company's post-launch difficulties after the unpopular Ai Pin, which sparked employee layoffs and speculation about a possible sale. But according to both founders, Humane's problems had no bearing on their choice to create Infactory.
Kocienda respected anyone who was prepared to take such risks, acknowledging the difficulties in starting a hardware firm and the bravery required to submit one's work for criticism. Rather than depending only on big conglomerates, he thinks the sector benefits from having entrepreneurs drive innovation.
It is expected that Infactory will launch in a few months, as stated by Hartley Moy.