Ex-Apple Designer Creates New AI Interface at Hark

A new venture from serial entrepreneur Brett Adcock is aiming to fundamentally reshape our relationship with artificial intelligence. The secretive lab, named Hark, is pursuing a novel integrated approach where it designs its own multi-modal AI models, the specialized hardware to run them, and the user interfaces all in unison. The stated goal is to create a seamless, end-to-end personal intelligence system with a persistent memory of a user’s life, capable of listening, seeing, and interacting with the world in real time.

This ambition reflects a broader Silicon Valley quest to move AI beyond being a feature tacked onto existing platforms and toward becoming a must-have consumer product. “Today’s AI models aren’t nearly intelligent enough, they feel quite dumb, and the devices we use to access them are fundamentally pre-AI,” Adcock wrote in an internal memo. He envisions a future with systems that anticipate needs and adapt to users, akin to science fiction companions.

A significant clue to Hark’s direction is its hiring of Director of Design Abidur Chowdhury, a former Apple industrial designer who led the team behind recent iPhone models. Chowdhury left Apple after meeting with Adcock and embracing his vision for automating life’s mundane tasks. In an interview, Chowdhury noted that while the world is changing, we are still using the same devices designed for older platforms. “Very few people are really going after what the future is,” he said, arguing for building intelligence at the base layer of technology rather than as an app on top.

He points to the collective burden of small chores, from filling out forms to planning travel, which consume significant mental energy and time. “We genuinely believe that all of the small tasks that pile up to be kind of gargantuan things today can be sort of automated from our lives,” Chowdhury explained. While the company knows what it is building, how users will experience it remains under wraps. A summer release for its initial AI models is planned.

Chowdhury expressed skepticism about current wearable AI platforms, such as smart glasses or camera pins, stating discomfort with adding a layer between people and the world. His design philosophy suggests a focus on seamless integration. “The future user experience will be finding the right thing for each individual,” he said, contrasting it with the traditional goal of finding the simplest thing for everyone. This pursuit of elegant, individualized simplicity draws a natural parallel to Apple’s design ethos and the work of former Apple designer Jony Ive, now at OpenAI, though Hark declined to comment on the comparison.

The company’s structure hints at a unique synergy. Hark’s models are already being trained using robots from Adcock’s other venture, the humanoid robotics company Figure, though a source indicates there is no plan to merge the two companies. This mirrors other integrated efforts in the industry, such as the alignment between Elon Musk’s xAI and Tesla’s robotics work.

With a team of 45 engineers and designers from companies like Meta, Apple, and Tesla, all co-located with Adcock’s other enterprises, Hark is scaling its technical capacity. It expects to deploy a new cluster of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs in April. Backed by $100 million in personal seed funding from Adcock, the company is entering a fierce competition for talent, aiming to define the next format for AI in daily life.

For Chowdhury, the potential feels historic. “It just feels like there’s an opportunity for better, and I’ve not felt like that since the iPhone came up,” he said, capturing the driving sentiment behind Hark’s ambitious and integrated mission.