If you ever needed definitive proof that the venture capital market is less a meritocracy and more a frantic, cocaine-fueled circle-jerk, look no further than the arrival of Humans&. This is a startup that has managed to vacuum up $480 million in a 'seed' round, a term that used to imply a few kids in a garage eating ramen, but now apparently signifies the GDP of a small Caribbean nation being set on fire to satisfy the ego of Silicon Valley’s latest set of 'alumni.' With a valuation of $4.48 billion before they’ve likely even decided on the color of their office ergonomic chairs, Humans& is the perfect monument to our era of terminal absurdity.

The pedigree here is, as expected, nauseating. We have refugees from Google, the company that effectively liquidated the concept of privacy; Anthropic, the 'safety' company that is about as transparent as a lead wall; and xAI, the vanity project of a man who spends his weekends picking fights with the vacuum of space. These architects of our digital obsolescence have now banded together under the banner of 'human-centric' AI. It is a rhetorical masterstroke of the highest order—a wolf opening a sheep-centric security firm and being handed a half-billion-dollar government contract for his 'innovative' approach to mutton safety. The sheer audacity required to market the tools of human displacement as a form of human 'empowerment' is almost admirable in its sociopathy.

Let’s dissect the 'human-centric' lie, shall we? In the lexicon of the tech grifter, 'empowering people' is simply a euphemism for 'finding a more efficient way to monetize your remaining cognitive functions before we automate them away.' They want us to believe that AI is a bicycle for the mind, conveniently ignoring the fact that the bicycle is currently being ridden by a faceless algorithm that is actively steering us off a cliff. The Left will inevitably fall for the 'ethical' branding, writing breathless op-eds about how 'responsible' AI is the key to a post-scarcity utopia, ignoring that the 'scarcity' being managed is actually our own agency. Meanwhile, the Right will celebrate this as a triumph of the free market, failing to realize that a market where $480 million is dumped into vaporware while actual infrastructure crumbles is not 'free'—it’s a hallucination.

The valuation of $4.48 billion for a seed round is a symptom of a financial system that has completely decoupled from reality. We are living in a terminal economy where money is no longer a medium of exchange for goods or services, but a speculative betting chip used by billionaires to see who can build the most complex mirror to stare at their own reflections. To value a company at nearly five billion dollars based on the 'vision' of people who have spent their careers building the very systems they now claim to be 'fixing' is a level of irony that would make Swift weep. It is a recursive loop of failure: create a problem, leave the company, raise half a billion dollars to solve the problem you created, and then get acquired by the original company for ten times the price. It is the ultimate grift, and the 'humans' in 'Humans&' are nothing more than the collateral damage.

Historically, when a society reaches the point where it begins worshipping the very tools of its own destruction, the end is usually a few chapters away. We are being told that these AI models will 'augment' us, as if the average human is a faulty piece of hardware in need of a software patch. The arrogance is breathtaking. They are not building tools for us; they are building the cage and asking us to admire the craftsmanship of the bars. They talk of 'alignment,' but the only thing being aligned is the flow of capital from the pockets of pension funds and retail investors into the offshore accounts of a few 'alums' who were smart enough to realize that fear sells better than function.

In the end, Humans& will likely follow the standard trajectory of the modern tech unicorn. There will be a series of glossy product launches featuring whiteboards and soft-focus shots of diverse people smiling at tablets. There will be 'partnerships' with other bloated tech giants. And eventually, the $480 million will be spent on 'scaling,' which is tech-speak for burning money to acquire market share that doesn't exist. But the founders won't care. They’ve already won. They’ve successfully convinced the world that the 'plus' in Humans& isn't a silent scream, but a promise of progress. It is a pathetic, predictable spectacle, and we are all forced to watch it while the people on stage pocket our future. Truly, the only thing 'human-centric' about this entire affair is the limitless capacity for human greed and the infinite depth of human gullibility.