Our Media | Humane

Humane is an experience company that creates the technologies and platforms for the intelligence age. Contextual computing, powered by AI, built on a foundation of trust and privacy. Humane believes in a future of technology that feels familiar, natural, and human.

HUMANE and the hu.ma.ne logo are registered trademarks of Humane, Inc.

Humane, Inc. gave a preview of its first product in a TED Talk recorded last month. The talk “The disappearing computer – and life when you can take AI everywhere” given by co-founder Imran Chaudhri outlines Humane’s perspective on designing devices for an Ai-driven future.

Humane previews first product in TED Talk.

At TED2023 in Vancouver, Humane gave a glimpse of the standalone device, which is built from the ground up for artificial intelligence. It is a small, lightweight, clothing-based wearable that can be worn in many different ways. It uses optical sensors that allow new kinds of contextual and ambient compute interactions that are ‘seamless, screenless and sensing’. This was a live demonstration of just some of the product’s use cases and features.

Imran outlines how Humane has worked to build a product that’s more transparent about its behaviors than the devices people use today and has built hardware and software which puts the user first from the outset.

Imran Chaudhri, Co-Founder, Chairman, and President of Humane, commented: “We believe Ai presents a huge opportunity for us to redefine our relationship to technology and that it will enable personal mobile computing to become faster, more powerful and easier to use. The first Humane device will allow people to bring Ai with them everywhere and we’re really looking forward to revealing more at our launch later this year.”

Watch the TED Talk

We are thrilled to announce the appointment of Kevin Purser as Humane’s Chief Operations Officer. Kevin brings invaluable expertise to our team. He has successfully built and led operations, supply chain, and manufacturing divisions across a wide range of companies — from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 firms.

Humane welcomes Kevin Purser as Chief Operations Officer.

Kevin spent over 13 years at Cisco in the 1990s and 2000s, managing the production and ramp of new products and scaling operations. Most recently, he led global supply chain sourcing and procurement at Fitbit, overseeing supply chain strategy both prior to Fitbit’s IPO and through its acquisition by Google in 2021. As a tech veteran with deep manufacturing and supply chain knowledge, Kevin has also served as the Operations Advisor to Humane for the last two years.

In his new role as COO, Kevin will oversee supply chain, operations, manufacturing, quality, and customer experience and support.

From Kevin Purser:
“Imran and Bethany are focused on creating a great company with the right culture that will yield innovative, industry-changing products.”

From Imran Chaudhri, Humane’s Co-founder, Chairman, and President:
“We’ve been building with Kevin for some time now in an advisory capacity, and we’re thrilled to have him join Humane full-time to help shape our organization and create new infrastructure to take us to the next level.”

From Bethany Bongiorno, Humane’s Co-founder and CEO:
“I am delighted to have Kevin join Humane’s leadership team as COO. His passion for building consumer hardware at scale and his experience in further developing high-performing organizations will be instrumental as we prepare for the release of our first product and beyond.”

The entire Humane team looks forward to working with Kevin as we build towards unveiling full details of our first product later this year.

We are excited to announce the appointment of Bill Shope as Humane’s Chief Financial Officer. With over two decades of experience at the intersection of technology and finance, Bill brings a wealth of expertise that spans from startups to industry giants.

Humane welcomes Bill Shope as Chief Financial Officer.

As one of Wall Street’s leading analysts, Bill has covered Apple and the broader computer industry for over eighteen years. He also served as a managing director at Goldman Sachs from 2010 to 2016 before venturing into entrepreneurship as a founder and CEO in the wholesale e-commerce sector. Bill’s finance leadership experience and deep industry expertise make him a valuable addition to the Humane team.

In his role as CFO, Bill will oversee all financial operations and work closely with the executive team to align financial strategy with business objectives. 

From Bill Shope:
“Humane is harnessing the growing power of AI to reimagine personal technology. Most importantly, the company is doing this in a way that amplifies human attention, interaction, and presence. I’m thrilled to be a part of this mission and a part of this team.”

From Imran Chaudhri, Humane’s Co-founder, Chairman, and President:
“Bill’s been covering our industry from the outside for quite some time, and it’s just incredible to be working alongside him to bring Humane’s products to market. Bill’s understanding of the space, the market, and the history of computing will allow us to innovate in all aspects of the business.”

From Bethany Bongiorno, Humane’s Co-founder and CEO:
“Imran and I have always believed that greater collaboration among all verticals of the business would enable us to build better products and, in turn, create greater long-term success. Bill is the perfect partner to help maintain operational efficiency, drive sustainable growth, and optimize our financial performance long into the future.”

Please join us in extending a warm welcome to Bill as he embarks on his journey with us at Humane.

Why it's important to advocate and practice good design principles in the intelligence age.

Good Ai is Humane.

We firmly believe that technology should be crafted to serve people, not the other way around. Humane is an experience company that uses technology for good, and not a technology company that finds good reasons to experience technology. There’s a difference, and that difference means putting people first — by design.

Our focus is on crafting Ai technology that is not only powerful but also thoughtfully designed and a joy to use. As we build towards launch, we wanted to share our 10 principles for designing Good Ai so that others can join us in our journey to create a brighter, more connected future where Ai technology is designed to uplift humanity, rather than overpower it. 

Ai should be designed with the utmost respect for privacy and security, ensuring that users' data is protected and their trust is earned.

Ai should be designed with an understanding of the ethical implications of its use, and should always prioritize the well-being of its user.

Ai should be transparent in its decision-making processes, allowing users to understand and trust the technology.

Trust + Privacy

Ai should seek to advance the lives of its users, not just be a new thing.

Ai should be designed with intention, solving real problems in a meaningful way.

Ai should work efficiently, without wasting resources or causing unnecessary strain to the experience.

Ai should be designed with the needs and perspectives of its users in mind, always striving to improve their experience.

Truth + Technology

Ai should be designed with accessibility in mind, ensuring that its benefits can be enjoyed by everyone–regardless of ability.

Ai should be designed for all, accounting for the diverse needs and perspectives of its wide range of users. 

Ai should be designed to be durable and reliable, ensuring that its benefits can be enjoyed for years to come.

See how Joy touches all of us through Design:

Joy + Design

Download our Principles for Designing with Ai here

designing-for-the-ai-era.mp4

$100m Series C round led by Kindred Ventures, with significant participation by SK Networks, Microsoft, LG Technology Ventures, Volvo Cars Tech Fund, Top Tier Capital, Hudson Bay Capital, and Socium Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global, Qualcomm Ventures, Valia Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Lachy Groom, and Sam Altman, Founder of OpenAI.

Strategic technology partners and collaborators include Microsoft, OpenAI, SK Networks, LG, and Volvo Cars.

Humane raises $100m in Series C round as it builds device and services platform for the AI era.

Humane, Inc. today announced it has raised a $100 million Series C round and secured a roster of significant strategic investors, new partnerships and collaborators ahead of the reveal of its initial product offering this spring.

Humane, founded in 2018 by ex-Apple team Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, is creating a first-of-its-kind software platform and consumer device built from the ground up for artificial intelligence (AI). This raise will enable Humane to accelerate on its mission to deliver the next era of personal mobile computing, which will be one driven by AI.

The round was led by Kindred Ventures with participation from existing investors Tiger Global, Valia Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Lachy Groom, and Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI.

The round also included participation from new strategic investors and partners including Hico Capital (US based investment arm of SK networks), Microsoft, Volvo Cars Tech Fund, LG Technology Ventures, Top Tier Capital, Hudson Bay Capital, and Socium Ventures.

Alongside investment, Humane has secured strategic collaborations with some of the most influential technology companies in the world:

Humane has partnered with Microsoft to bring its services platform to market. This will see Humane leverage the best cloud infrastructure in AI.

A collaboration with OpenAI will integrate its technology into the Humane device and deliver OpenAI and Humane AI experiences at scale to consumers.

Humane’s future global expansion plans include a collaboration with SK Networks (which covers the ICT device distribution business in Korea and has an extensive global network) to build on the shared ethos of creating meaningful change in consumer technologies.

While the initial Humane device will be focused on delivering the next generation of personal technology, the company is exploring ways to bring its solutions into new personal domains in the future:

A collaboration with LG will see the companies working closely on potential R&D projects for the next phase of Humane products, on the core technology included in future Humane devices and on integration into the home technology space.

Strategic investor Volvo Cars Tech Fund will work with Humane on a potential future collaboration which would be the first example of Humane’s offering being applied to the automotive industry. Like Humane, Volvo Cars develops technology to simplify life for its customers and the partnership is built on the shared values of safety, trust and privacy.

Imran Chaudhri, Co-Founder of Humane, commented: “Our first device will enable people to bring AI with them everywhere. It’s an exciting time, and we’ve been focused on how to build the platform and device that can fully harness the true power and potential of this technology.

We are extremely proud to announce this industry leading line-up of partners and collaborators, and we are thrilled to work closely with them to bring Humane’s vision to market. We are at the beginning of the next era of compute, and believe that together we can begin the journey to fundamentally reshape the role of technology in people’s lives."

Steve Jang, Founder and Managing Partner of Kindred Ventures, commented: "We're absolutely thrilled to continue to be a part of Humane's journey since the seed of their vision to create a more fluid, powerful, and contextual computing experience for both leveraging and developing AI. After serving in their past lives as an integral part of building the smartphone era of computing, this incredible team has been laser focused on enabling and amplifying human ideas, actions, moments, and modalities in a more creative and delightful way. As we enter into this next wave of AI, we're so inspired by Humane's mission to develop a device and services platform designed and built from ground up for this new world, and we welcome our existing and new co-investors and strategic partners to this transformational journey."

Patrick Gates, CTO of Humane, commented: “We’ve been building for over four years now, going from a small group around a conference table to a world class team getting ready to ship a product and platform, along with some of the most influential technology and AI companies in the world. Our products are built on an integrated device and cloud platform that will allow us, and others, to create AI-driven experiences that feel natural, fun, and needed.”

Business of Fashion’s VOICES is an annual gathering of innovators, creatives, and industry experts that takes place outside of Oxford, England.

Business of Fashion’s VOICES is an annual gathering of innovators, creatives and industry experts that takes place outside of Oxford, England.

Imran Chaudhri is speaking at BoF VOICES in England.

Humane President, Co-Founder, and Chief Designer, Imran Chaudhri, spoke about how AI will change the future of technology.

Imran Chaudhri Spoke at BoF VOICES in England

Imran Chaudhri Spoke at BoF VOICES in England.

Humane is pleased to announce that Sam Sheffer, a multi-platform content creator, producer, YouTuber and technologist has joined Humane as its Head of New Media. 

Sam Sheffer joins Humane as Head of New Media.

Sam got his professional start in tech media at age 19 with Engadget, where he rose from intern to contributing editor in two years. After Engadget, he spent four years building out The Verge’s social media and emerging platforms presence, growing multiple accounts to over one million followers. In 2015, Sam joined Mashable to lead its Snapchat Discover efforts and create video content for YouTube, Facebook Live, and Instagram. Before joining Humane, Sam created content independently, amassing a combined 1M followers across Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, and now creates content independently, full-time, for his audience. He has a deep passion for technology, music, sneakers, and streetwear. 

Sam Sheffer said “I first discovered Humane in late 2020 and immediately felt this company was special. The name, the branding, the ethos, it invoked a sense of intrigue which has only strengthened in the two years since. Humane has an extraordinary roster of talent and I’m thrilled to be joining them on their mission: to build great technology that is born from good intentions and redefines what it means to be connected.” 

In this new role, Sam will oversee efforts to reimagine the ever changing landscape of new media, with a focus on how Humane will engage its very dynamic and growing community of supporters and ensuing customers. Sam is an accomplished creator of community with nearly 14 years of technology focused narratives and coverage in the digital media space. 

Imran Chaudhri, Humane’s Co-founder, Chairman and President said “Sam’s passion for consumer technology is unparalleled. He has an innate sense of what matters to our growing community of supporters and understands that they are looking for something different. Being able to speak to our community directly excites all of us at Humane and we’re confident that Sam’s expertise will be the driving force”.

Bethany Bongiorno, Humane’s Co-founder & CEO said “There is no better person than Sam to help develop and amplify the voice of our community to make sure we get it right. Because in the end, we are building for all of us.” 

Change Everything.

media-video-change-everything-poster.mp4

David Graver is COOL HUNTING's Editor in Chief. His areas of expertise include art, film, fashion, travel and hospitality, with further specialization in watches and spirits. David represents COOL HUNTING around the world at events including Baselworld, Milan Design Week, Miami Art Week, Tales of the Cocktail and New York Fashion Week, as well as gallery openings, product launches and cultural happenings.

A powerful teaser trailer hints at technology informed by humanity.

A First Glimpse at What Tech Company Humane is Developing.

Founded by Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, two pioneering former Apple employees, Humane has been an innovation initiative in development for several years now. Though the organization has garnered attention for its top talent (Chaudhri invented the user interface on the iPhone and holds thousands of patents, while Bongiorno was responsible for iOS and macOS software project management and held a crucial role in milestone projects like the launch of the original iPad), little has been revealed about what technologies they’re attempting to advance or what product they intend to release. That is, until today, thanks to a powerful, poetic teaser trailer directed by Ryan Staake.

Change Everything

In the film, entitled “Change Everything,” one protagonist stands amidst a throng of figures tethered to their devices—some handheld, others strapped to wrists or covering eyes. The protagonist, however, finds the Humane logo in the real world. Coupling these observations with Humane’s mission to push technology forward by “rethinking, reconsidering and remembering honest human connection in the context of computing,” one can’t help but percolate with excitement over what more will come.

Tiger Global Management and other key investors back Humane to build the future of computing.

Humane Completes Series B Funding Round.

Humane Raises $100m in Series B

Humane Inc. today announced that it has raised $100 million in its Series B round. The round was led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from SoftBank Group, BOND, Forerunner Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, and others. This round will enable Humane to scale its operations and continue executing and expanding on its mission to deliver the next shift between humans and computing.

“Humane is a place where people can truly innovate through a genuine collaboration of design and engineering,” said Humane co-founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno. “We are an experience company that creates products for the benefit of people, crafting technology that puts people first—a more personal technology that goes beyond what we know today. We’re all waiting for something new, something that goes beyond the information age that we have all been living with. At Humane, we’re building the devices and the platform for what we call the intelligence age. We are committed to building a different type of company, founded on our values of trust, truth and joy. With the support of our partners, we will continue to scale the team with individuals who not only share our passion for revolutionizing the way we interact with computing, but also for how we build.”

“The caliber of individuals working at Humane is incredibly impressive,” said Chase Coleman, Partner, Tiger Global. “These are people who have built and shipped transformative products to billions of people around the world. What they are building is groundbreaking with the potential to become a standard for computing going forward.”

Other investors who participated in this round include Sam Altman, Lachy Groom, Kindred Ventures, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Valia Ventures, NEXT VENTŪRES, Plexo Capital and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

video-background-4.mp4

Ingrid is a writer and editor for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London.

Before TechCrunch, Ingrid worked at paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect.

When it comes to work, she feels most comfortable speaking in English but can also speak Russian, Spanish and French (in descending order of competence).

Humane, a stealthy hardware and software startup co-founded by  an ex-Apple designer and engineer, raises $100M.

A stealthy startup co-founded by a former senior designer from Apple and one of its ex-senior software engineers has picked up a significant round of funding to build out its business. Humane, which has ambitions to build a new class of consumer devices and technologies that stem from “a genuine collaboration of design and engineering” that will represent “the next shift between humans and computing”, has raised $100 million.

This is a Series B, and it’s coming from some very high-profile backers. Tiger Global Management is leading the round, with SoftBank Group, BOND, Forerunner Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures also participating. Other investors in this Series B include Sam Altman, Lachy Groom, Kindred Ventures, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Valia Ventures, NEXT VENTŪRES, Plexo Capital and the legal firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Humane has been around since 2017, but it closed/filed its Series A only last year: $30 million in September 2020 at a $150 million valuation, according to PitchBook. Previous to that, it had raised just under $12 million, with many of the investors in this current round backing Humane in those earlier fundraises, too.

Valuation with this Series B is not being disclosed, the company confirmed to me.

Given that Humane has not yet released any products, nor has said much at all about what it has up its sleeve, and given that hardware in general presents a lot of unique challenges and therefore is often seen as a risky bet (that old “hardware is hard” chestnut), you might be wondering how Humane, still in stealth, has attracted these backers.

Some of that attention possibly stems from the fact that the two co-founders, husband-and-wife team Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, are something of icons in their own right. Bongiorno, who is Humane’s CEO, had been the software engineering director at Apple. Chaudhri, who is Humane’s chairman and president, is Apple’s former director of design, where he worked for 20 years on some of its most seminal products—the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac. Both have dozens of patents credited to them from their time there, and they have picked up a few since then, too.

Those latest patents—plus the very extensive list of job openings listed on Humane’s otherwise quite sparse site—might be the closest clues we have for what the pair and their startup might be building.

One patent is for a “Wearable multimedia device and cloud computing platform with laser projection system”; another is for a “System and apparatus for fertility and hormonal cycle awareness.”

Meanwhile, the company currently has nearly 50 job openings listed, including engineers with camera and computer vision experience, hardware engineers, designers and security experts, among many others. (One sign of where all that funding will be going.) There is already an impressive team of about 60 people at the company, which is another detail that attracted investors.

“The caliber of individuals working at Humane is incredibly impressive,” said Chase Coleman, partner, Tiger Global, in a statement. “These are people who have built and shipped transformative products to billions of people around the world. What they are building is groundbreaking with the potential to become a standard for computing going forward.”

I’ve asked for more details on the company’s product roadmap and ethos behind the company, and who its customers might potentially be: other firms for whom it designs products, or end users directly?

For now, Bongiorno and Chaudhri seem to hint that part of what has motivated them to start this business was to reimagine what role technology might play in the next wave of innovation. It’s a question that many ask, but not many try to actually invest in finding the answer. For that alone, it’s worth watching Humane (if Humane lets us, that is: it’s still very much in stealth) to see what it does next.

“Humane is a place where people can truly innovate through a genuine collaboration of design and engineering,” the co-founders said in a joint statement. “We are an experience company that creates products for the benefit of people, crafting technology that puts people first—a more personal technology that goes beyond what we know today. We’re all waiting for something new, something that goes beyond the information age that we have all been living with. At Humane, we’re building the devices and the platform for what we call the intelligence age. We are committed to building a different type of company, founded on our values of trust, truth and joy. With the support of our partners, we will continue to scale the team with individuals who not only share our passion for revolutionizing the way we interact with computing, but also for how we build.”

Update: After publishing, I got a little more from Humane about its plans. Its aim is to build “technology that improves the human experience and is born of good intentions; products that put us back in touch with ourselves, each other, and the world around us; and experiences that are built on trust, with interactions that feel magical and bring joy.” It’s not a whole lot to go on, but more generally it’s an approach that seems to want to step away from the cycle we’re on today, and be more mindful and thoughtful. If they can execute on this, while still building rather than wholesale rejecting technology, they might be on to something.

Humane, a stealthy hardware and software startup co-founded by an ex-Apple designer and engineer, raises $100M.

Making Technology Human Again.

wired-media.mp4

Katharine Schwab is the deputy editor of Fast Company's technology section. Email her at kschwab@fastcompany.com and follow her on Twitter @kschwabable

Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno helped create some of Apple’s biggest hits. Now their startup Humane is at work on something ambitious—and mysterious.

Two ex-Apple rock stars have raised $30m to build the next iPhone.

In 2017, two of Apple’s top design and technology executives decided to leave the company to start their own venture with an ambitious vision: to create the next big computing paradigm. That startup, called Humane, is now announcing that it has raised $30 million in a series A round of venture funding to continue developing its mysterious product. While cofounders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno refuse to reveal what they’re working on, its cofounders seem to believe it will have the same kind of impact as the iPhone—which is saying a lot, given that one of them designed the iPhone’s original interface.

“We are at a point in terms of computing platforms where there’s a certain level of maturation that’s led to a decline in innovation,” says Humane president and chairman Chaudhri, who worked on the UI design of the iPhone and the iPad during his 21 years at Apple. “For us, it’s really about how we actually bring vitality and how we bring a new opportunity to computing. How do we move the needle?”

It’s impossible to have an opinion about the potential impact of Humane’s creation until it reveals at least some details. Tony Fadell, who spearheaded the iPod and also helped bring us the iPhone, left Apple over a decade ago and soon after started talking about “a product that could have a huge impact on a big problem,” as he told The New York Times in 2011. His startup Nest’s creation turned out to be a thermostat. But Humane is certainly dialing up the expectations for whatever it’s working on.

“We’re tech optimists at heart. But we believe it’s also time to question everything to build something better.”

The startup’s ambitions derive in part from Chaudhri reckoning with the downsides of the products he was instrumental in creating—particularly the ways in which smartphones can nag at and monopolize our attention while siphoning away private data for corporations to profit from. But that doesn’t mean that Chaudhri and Bongiorno, a former director of software engineering at Apple who worked with Chaudhri to launch the iPad, believe that technology is a net negative force in society.

“We’re tech optimists at heart,” says Bongiorno, who is Humane’s CEO. “But we believe it’s also time to question everything to build something better.”

Instead, they’re betting that the time is right for a new, less invasive way to interface with computers. It’s a compelling vision, despite the lack of details. “Every product, especially in computing, has a limitation in terms of how far it can go, what it can do before it starts to really become exhausted. That’s exhausted in terms of creativity, exhausted in terms of usefulness, exhausted in terms of the experience of using it as well,” Chaudhri says. “This is a cyclical thing that’s always occurred. Some people from a certain perspective call it a 15-year cycle. We’re coming on that for the smartphone.”

While the duo originally planned to raise funds the week after the pandemic lockdown began in San Francisco, they ultimately ended up taking meetings with investors in June. Within 10 days, they had found their next partners: Sam Altman, former president of Y Combinator and the CEO of AI-development organization OpenAI, and Lachy Groom, an entrepreneur, angel investor, and early employee at Stripe. These two investors are contributing most of the series A round, while a small syndicate of other investors, including Marc Benioff, Valia Ventures, Plexo Capital, and Kindred Ventures, make up the rest.

“I thought the team was exceptional and their vision for a new computing platform and what that would mean for the world as a whole, combined with their expertise delivering on super ambitious things like this . . . it was something I was excited to see and immediately wanted to be part of,” Altman says.

Eventually, the wait will be over and the rest of us will be able to see what the fuss is all about. Bongiorno says the company plans to announce the details before the end of next year. But when we spoke, Groom provided a small hint: “It was one of those things that only seems obvious in hindsight,” he says.

Megan Hernbroth is a California-based senior reporter for Business Insider, where she covers healthcare startups and venture capital. She reports on digital health startups of all stages and sizes, such on-demand in-home healthcare solutions, telemedicine startups, and direct-to-consumer solutions. She also covers financial deals in healthcare, from large mergers and acquisitions through IPOs and SPACs.

They built and designed some of Apple’s hottest devices, and now these two former Apple execs are building a startup for people who want a healthier relationship with technology.

Much like Dr. Frankenstein, two former Apple employees are coming to terms with the unintended consequences of their creations. But in a uniquely Silicon Valley twist, the designers are—naturally—starting a company to rein it in.

Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri founded Humane, a hardware and software startup currently operating in stealth, after leaving their roles at Apple in late 2016 and early 2017, respectively. Together, they have over three decades of experience at the tech giant and have been involved in just about every major device and software launch to date. 

"We found that our desire and passion for computing and technology didn't just end at the work we did at Apple. It went a lot further than that," Chaudhri told Business Insider. "We wanted to think about what the world really needed and could use given the state of humanity and the idea of the modern connected human we have all turned into, mainly as a result of the work we did almost 15 years ago now."

They founded Humane in 2019 after meeting with advisors, technical experts, and average users throughout Silicon Valley. In July, the startup raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Kindred Ventures, Valia Ventures, and Marc Benioff, which has gone unreported until now. The startup is still operating in stealth, but Bongiorno and Chaudhri told Business Insider that there will be substantial software and hardware components to what will eventually become its flagship product. 

"We saw where the money was going and what others were building and thought we could build something better," Bongiorno said. "We really felt we had an idea that was bigger and better than what was out there."

On Thursday, the company announced that another Apple alum, Rubén Caballero, is joining the 18-person team as a technical advisor with the engineering team. Caballero, who was formerly vice president of wireless technology and engineering at the tech giant, is coming on board may provide a peek into the young startup's long-term ambitions.

"When Bethany and Imran told me what they are building at Humane, I knew that I had to be a part of it," Caballero told Business Insider via email. "Their vision for Humane is ambitious and challenges the traditional expectations and assumptions we have come to accept as a society when using technology. They are building the future, which is exactly the type of work that excites me. I'm honored to be a part of this world-class team."

Part of the "live and learn" ethos that Bongiorno and Chaudhri have built into that team is another lesson they took from Apple: values come first even if that's at the expense of rapid growth. Hiring for any early-stage startup is a challenge, they said, but even more so when the team is building deeply technical products from scratch. New hires like Caballero must fit and "advocate for" the company's values, Bongiorno told Business Insider.

"You do have to make sure every hire is given the same care and thought," Bongiorno said. "That may mean you grow more slowly than people expect or would like. Usually it's external pressure to move more quickly than you should. But if it means slowing down hiring, that's what we will do because we are in this for the long game."

We’re creating experiences that are built on trust, with interactions that feel magical and bring joy. It’s in our name.

its-in-our-name.mp4

Ryan Houlihan is the Senior Gaming Editor at Input, covering modern and retro video game hardware, software, and culture. Additionally, he hosts the podcast Tomorrow with BDG Media’s Chief Content Officer, Joshua Topolsky.

We chatted with design power couple Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno about the tiny tablet that could.

The iPad’s original software designer and program lead look back on the device’s first 10 years.

Ten years ago, Apple introduced one of the most influential products of the company's modern era: the iPad. After years of struggling in internal development, and seeing the smash success of its siblings the iPhone and the iPod Touch, the iPad finally debuted. It made promises to replace everything from notepads to cash registers to textbooks to conventional computers—some of which it was wildly successful at and some of which it struggles to manage even today.

While consumers pick up an iPhone for social media and communication, a Mac for work or homework, and an Apple Watch to track their fitness, the iPad remains a confounding product that most users buy and then find a use for. And yet, they love it.

Regardless, the iPad is a staple of the modern tech landscape, and it’s hard to remember a time when we saw it and thought, “What is that? A large phone?” Two people who’ve known the iPad longer than anyone are Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, the married founders of the mysterious new tech start up Humane, who met while working at Apple on the iPad and related projects. For the tenth anniversary of the iPad, Input talked to them about its strange development, its biggest feature flops, and how it has changed the world.

Input: Tell me a bit about your history with Apple and the iPad.

Imran Chaudhri, Former Director of Design on the Human Interface team: I came to Apple in 95 as an intern in the Advanced Technologies Group. When I finished school in 97, I came to Apple and Steve was there after the NeXT acquisition and he was going through and cutting and trimming the fat at Apple—and ATG was a place that he wasn't a huge fan of. He wasn't a huge fan of research for research sake and I wasn't either, which was kind of an interesting thing. I always wanted to really, really ship products and ATG really wasn't about that. Steve laid off everybody in ATG and I was kind of left to figure out what I was going to do. I started emailing Steve some ideas and we started working closely together and the relationship formed a lot of products, the revitalization of the Mac, going on to the iPod, the development of multitouch to the iPhone and iPad and, post, to a bunch of stuff like the Watch, the AirPods and HomePod, etc. All things we finished before I left a couple of years ago. I met Bethany working on the iPad. She joined the year and a half before the iPad started.

Bethany Bongiorno, Former Software Engineering Director: I joined in 2008, actually, right after they shipped the first phone. I joined immediately after that and started as a project manager on the iPhone. There was a very small team back then; we sat kind of in one hallway. [The phone] was definitely a startup within Apple and I was brought on board because the project manager that was working there really didn't like working with designers and really didn't like working at the higher levels of the stack. She preferred kind of working at a lower level; the core operating system and the kernel and things like that.

Then very quickly after that, they told me that the real reason they had to hire me was because Steve had this pet project that he was really excited about and they needed somebody to lead that effort because the team really needed to remain focused on development of iPhone. They needed to kind of spin up a startup within a startup that would be a small team to build this new project codenamed K48. K48 was hardware and Wildcat was the codename for the software. They asked me to lead that initiative, to build the engineering team and to lead the effort for the K48 project, which ultimately became the iPad. Then eventually I took on MacOS. We had a big team of people and I worked on many things with Apple over the years.

Input: When you guys were working on the iPad, in those early days when a few of the iPhones had shipped, obviously the reaction was huge. Was there a centralized idea of what you were working towards or was it like, “Okay, let's just blue sky this and do some experimentation and see where we want to end up.” Or, at the beginning, was it like “We want it to be basically this user interaction in this shape”?

Imran: We always had a good understanding of where we wanted the iPad to be in people's lives. The story of the iPad goes way back beyond before the phone. It started out as this project called Q79. Q79 was the product that was built around multitouch exploration. So we were, at the time, looking at “How can we actually move computing forward? What's wrong with the Mac? And what's keeping it from being really, really more responsive and more direct?” A lot of those questions are answered in terms of “How do we actually achieve a more direct and more responsive input through multitouch?” and that program was built around creating a product line called Q79. At the time, it was looking at bringing a multitouch screen to a Macintosh laptop. Specifically the iBook, at the time. It turned out that was a really, really expensive endeavor and it just wasn't really going to be successful for Apple to build a super expensive computer coming off of having released the Cube, which didn't do well. We kind of pulled away from that effort and focused on a much smaller thing, which was the phone. When we resurrected the iPad, we knew that it was always designed as a computer and it was literally the perfect playground for multitouch. The phone was the first delivery mechanism but we always knew that we wanted a desktop class face to run applications for multitouch.

Input: Apple doesn't strike me in its design or its project choices as a very reactionary place. The feeling I get when I look at Apple products is that they're looking both into what could be immediately used in someone's life and then also what's going to be useful to the company to be positioned as in ten years. The Watch and AirPods are platform agnostic, the iPad is an excellent window into cloud computing or gaming, etc. How much of that is strategic and how much is it that Apple takes so much time doing polish and so much time iterating that it appears that way externally?

Imran: I think some of the products that you're mentioning are born at different times of Apple's lifespan and the way of doing things has changed over the years. I think that sometimes impacts your ability to execute things well. But in an ideal way, when I think that Apple was really executing in a way that was really effective for the customer, it was really strongest when it was envisioning a way for people to use their products in their lives versus the other way around. Actually, as a design philosophy, that's really important for me and concrete and germane to how we think about things at Humane. We always need to look at what the real customer needs, even if the customer doesn't understand where things are going.

Bethany: Steve really had a way to force the entire ecosystem around our products to move in a direction that we wanted. So while it may seem like we were perfectly placed for these things to come online, in reality most likely we were behind the scenes kind of pulling the strings. Steve—and the team, Imran and our team—when we brought people in, we were very clear on the direction that we felt they needed to go. We were the ones telling them “This is how you need to evolve your platform. This is how you need to evolve your ecosystem and use our tools to give the customer the best solution.” With news, you know, Steve was the one calling up The New York Times and calling up The Wall Street Journal and calling up these magazines and saying “You need to do this. You need to build these applications. You need to make this a priority. This is the future. This is where we all should be going.” He definitely had this vision of not only owning our products but owning where the customer experience went overall.

Gaming is a great example of that for the iPhone. When we built the iPhone, you know, building games for a touchscreen device like that was something that that market had no idea how to do. So when we were building the App Store, we had to develop applications internally. And Imran actually helped build this game called Touch Fighter, which used the touchscreen to basically drive this plane. Then Imran also had the idea of “Hey, let's take this accelerometer,” which was in the phone purely for the rotation of images from landscape to portrait, and said “Let's take this accelerometer and let's open it up and have hooks to allow game developers to use that to enhance the gaming experience.” So they built this Touch Fighter game that used the accelerometer. Then they brought this game to a bunch of game developers and said “This is how you build games for this platform. This is where gaming is going.” And they said, “Well, where are we going to put the A/B buttons? Where are we going to put the joystick?” I was telling them “There are no buttons. The entire screen is the button. There is no joystick. Use the accelerometer.”

I think in a lot of ways we set the tone for where everything should go, and so I think that's why it felt like a beautifully crafted piece of music, if that makes sense.

Imran: I think you kind of have to start evangelizing the promise of new platforms for people to really get it and then and only then you start to create the future that you're envisioning.

Input: When the iPad launched, it hit really big and hard. A lot of imitators showed up and it permeated culture in an interesting way where it's now hard to imagine that multitouch was just being used on a phone before. But was there stuff in the production that you felt didn't succeed? Or dead ends that you went down, that you were like “Oh, this isn't going to work. We spent a lot of time on it but this just doesn't fit into people's lives”?

Bethany: Yeah, I think what's interesting about being a part of, you know, developing a totally new platform and a totally new product category—which the iPad was one example of many times that we've done that—is that the whole process for building it isn't a straight line. It was incredibly iterative. And in fact, we redesigned and redesigned, and redesigned, and reimplemented, and reimplemented, and reimplemented experiences and applications on the iPad up until the point that we shipped. A lot of it was us internally as a test bed using it and saying “This isn't working. This isn't fitting what we think is the right direction for the product category that we're building.” There were a lot of things that weren't working as we were building it that we completely threw out, fully implemented designs that we had started with, to redefine, and redefine, and redevelop as we were doing it. I definitely think there were some things that we felt were really important and some things even on the hardware side that we thought were really important that people ultimately didn't really use. And a lot of it, I think, was because it was a little bit too early. I would say the camera import was one that I think we thought was really important and wasn't used to the extent that I would say we thought it was going to be.

Imran: I think camera stuff was two interesting ones. When it was first designed, we were imagining how people were going to use it in this space. So we created this dock that gave you the opportunity to mount it to a keyboard and so that it could look like an iMac class thing. Again remember, we were always designing this as a computer to begin with, but it wasn't as powerful as a computer at the time. One of the things that Steve was really interested in was using the iPad as a photo frame. So if this thing is sitting [in a dock] in your kitchen or sitting in your living room—it's sitting there at an angle that can be viewed as a photo frame and these images can be streamed to the iPad and people can benefit from this really dynamic quarter-sized screen that is giving them something when it's idle.

The reality is that it was such a personal device that it spent more time in your bag or next to your bed stand or, you know, next to you on your sofa than it did sitting kind of idle presenting itself—and those are things that you don't really get until you actually see what people do with it. People dictate the direction of the product.

“It was a funny conversation when we started seeing people taking photos on vacation. I don’t think we actually thought people would use it that way.”

Bethany: We talked about the hope that it would be kind of this photo frame, like ‘“How are they going to get the photos on it?” We actually didn't believe that people would walk around taking pictures with their iPad. It was actually a funny internal conversation when we started seeing people outside taking their iPad with them and taking photos on vacation. I don't think we actually thought people would use it that way—and they ultimately did. But what we decided was that there had to be some way to get your photos onto it and so we developed a hardware exchange to allow you to insert an SD card and download your images. That actually was something that came in really late and it was a lot of work for the team to kind of scramble to make happen. I don’t think ultimately it was something that really took off in the way that we thought it would. This was way before we built iCloud photos and things like that.

Imran: I think the speed of the networks and the speed of the bus ended up being a lot faster than the size of the images that people were using to transfer back and forth from the iPad to make it all worth it.

But the [iPad] camera is super funny. That's the other thing that we didn't anticipate being so big. But it was a segment of the population at the time that really was using the camera more than anything else. So I remember very clearly at the 2012 Olympics in London, if you looked around the stadium, you saw a lot of people using an iPad as a camera and generally that was people that just needed to have a bigger viewfinder for vision reasons, etc. Then seeing that, we went back in and redesigned the camera experience on the iPad—recognizing that this is going to be a thing that we just can't get people away from because they want this larger viewfinder.

Bethany: Yeah, we spent a lot of time on the photo UI and I think it was something we were really proud of in iPad 1.0. We did a lot with multitouch and, if you remember, we had the beautiful stack that kind of expanded and contracted with pinch. We saw this iPad as like the perfect delivery mechanism for multitouch and we really played with that idea. And it was funny because it didn't start out that way in terms of how the apps were being developed. When we did our first iteration of app design, I would say that it wasn't as playful. It wasn’t dependent on these really beautiful multitouch interactions. But what we ended up shipping, I think we were really proud of the photo experience. We did think it was really important that we created this kind of really fun, interactive view. And I think it worked really well.

Imran: That one in particular was designed by a good friend of ours called Mike Matas and, as Steve was getting sicker and in poor health, that was one of those things that he really enjoyed the most. The photo stuff.

Input: When the Apple Pencil eventually came out, people reacted like "Finally, this is an admission that we need this." But to me it struck me as the technology for the right kind of stylus hadn't really been ready yet. And multitouch was just a better human interaction for most applications. Was a stylus even a consideration when first building the iPad—even for artists?

Imran: No. You know, it wasn't a consideration at all. We always felt that the fidelity of touch was always going to be enough for you to do what you wanted to do. But the thing that was really driving a lot of the explorations in the Pencil were using the Pencil as a controller so that you could drive the software and get the most out of it. We put a lot of sensors into the Pencil that allowed you to replicate different angles of the point of your pen. So the rotation, that you could use to create a really defined calligraphy, then also [you were] able to take the Pencil and go from its point to its side to really enable high fidelity shading. We built those degrees of operation into the Pencil so that people could have that enriched level of input. It was meant to be used in concert. So imagine the way you twist a piece of paper as an artist would—as you're drawing and adjusting your pencils. So those two things work hand in hand. As with any tool, people come up with different use cases for them and I think such was the case for the Apple Pencil when they opened it up for developers. The imagination of developers drives a slew of amazing things. So you started to see great note-taking applications come forward, which wasn't really the point, so to speak, of the Apple Pencil, but it was an enriched use case that came out of it.

Input: Why do you think people hate using Android on tablets but love using iOS?

Imran: There's a craftsmanship that goes into building compute devices that, especially when we're trying to emulate experiences like with the Pencil or experiences like multitouch that require a certain fidelity, there's a frame rate requirement. There's a thinking requirement. All of that really goes down into the work of the engineering team—along with design—that tends to really make the best experience—to make all of the hiccups that you experience on other platforms just go away. You know, things like really incredibly high refresh rates for scrolling and really incredibly high refresh rates for panning that at the end of the day take a lot of work but are invisible to the customer, I think. Maybe that's kind of what you're getting at?

Bethany: I would say that I think that, you know, Imran and I often talk about software being like the soul of the product, right? I think that when you look at something like a tablet or even a phone—that is a very personal product. You're using it in more personal ways. It feels more close to you. You're feeling more connected to it. I think when there feels like there's a lack of depth and when it feels like there is like a lack of that soul, I think it doesn't feel as good. And I think people have a higher bar for what they're looking for on more personal products.

Input: There's a lot that has been said about the differences between Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. Generally, those takes strike me to be guesses by people with very limited information—but as people that worked very closely through both eras, did you feel there was a huge difference in the leadership style? And if so, what do you think was the cause of that?

Bethany: There's no doubt that Tim has built a very successful company and has brought a lot of wealth to Apple shareholders and to the company overall, and I think that's a testament to the fact that he is the best in the world at operations is he's incredibly innovative on operations. But his specialty and his skill set is not in building innovative products, right? Product definition and product development. I think that's something that is just a fact of the change in leadership between him and Steve and the kinds of things that Steve really cared about versus the things that Tim really cares about. And I think for people like us who are, you know, really on the creative side and really want to push things—that was definitely more in line with Steve's mission than it was Tim's.

Imran: Yeah, I think you always find different passions that drive people when they lead organizations. I think one of the things I love a lot about Tim's passions is his passion for philanthropy and giving back to a community. Apple is in a great place to do that now and I'm really excited to see them do a lot of that. In Steve's days, Apple wasn't as well off, so that wasn't something that was a focus for Steve. But I think the way Tim is doing that is incredibly remarkable. I hope it continues.

Input: We all know with 20/20 hindsight what the history of the iPad is 10 years later. But if you were to take a guess at 10 years in the future, do you see the iPad evolving to replace the Mac? Do you see it being a portal to cloud or streaming services? What do you think is the next big step for that platform?

Imran: I think it'll be interesting for all of us to watch and see how Apple evolves the iPad. But, you know, I think one of the struggles that customers have with the iPad right now is really trying to figure out what role it plays in terms of a portable class computer. You have a traditional desktop computer or a traditional laptop computer—and where does the iPad fit in? You know, I would hope and I think they would continue to evolve it to a point where the iPad does end up doing a lot more that the Mac [currently] does and that the Mac redefines itself as more of a professional tool and the iPad defines itself as more of a mass consumer computing platform. I think that would be almost like a natural progression. But we'll see where they go. I mean, there's some great people there that are really passionate about refinement and, you know, I think they're doing a decent job with that.

Input: You're both working on a new project at Humane. I was wondering why did you feel it was time to leave Apple after you'd spent so long there and had created products that you could see had such a massive impact on the world? What was the impetus to step away from such a huge, influential company and position?

Bethany: Obviously we feel really fortunate to have been a part of some huge things there and really enjoyed our time at Apple and obviously still have a bunch of close friends that are there and are huge supporters. But I think, you know, for everybody there is a time where you feel like it's time to move on and time to do something different. We had kind of done the song and dance enough—we had built many, many phones many times over—and I think [we] felt like we really wanted to take some time off and really think about what we felt was the next thing and what we felt was the future of computing. And we always knew that we wanted to go off and do things our own way and build our own company. I think we had ambitions to do that. [We were] not really sure what that meant early on, but it just came down to a fact of, you know, when the right time was. I think when we both realized it was the right time to do that and make the jump, we did.

We took some time off to really just kind of reflect on our experiences, reconnect with family and take care of ourselves and do things that you kind of need to do before you begin the next journey. I used to tell Imran that we had to get home base and everything sturdy before we took that spaceship, which would be the next step in building Humane. And so our focus was always on what we thought was gonna be the future of computing and looking at what the market was investing in . . . what were other people building, where was the money going and trying to figure out, like, is this the world we want to live in? I think we looked around at, you know, what was being built and where the money was going and felt that we had a better idea. We had something that was more innovative, was more ambitious, was the type of risks and ambitious undertakings that we were used to doing in the past and that we had the drive to do again. And and that kind of set out for us to build Humane and bring a team together to do it.

Imran: I think anytime you really endeavor to do something, you have to sort of break away and spend a lot of time figuring out what that actually is. And so we spent a lot of time looking at different emerging technologies and the opportunities there in terms of how those could be incorporated in the types of experiences that we were looking to bring over. Those are fundamental things like artificial intelligence and computer vision and machine learning. You know, I think stuff that isn't particularly anybody's wheelhouse, but things I think we wanted to go off and imagine and do on our own. And I think that's kind of what we're doing at Humane—is to really go through and explore the opportunities for new computer experiences built around those types of things.

Bethany: I think when you when you don't have the weight or the gravity of an existing platform and existing ecosystem and you can kind of shed those constraints and really think about "How would we build something from the ground up independently?" and "How would we do that, leveraging these incredible emerging technologies?" and really think about what we think the future of computing should be. And if we look at the phone as like, you know, it's 13 years old now. The iPhone is nearly 13 years old. I think we felt that if that was going to be the pinnacle of computing, then that would be unfortunate. We really wanted to kind of be able to start anew and think about where we felt things should be going.

Input: What is your biggest point of pride about your work on the iPad? And what would you say is your biggest regret about either your work or the product in general?

Bethany: I mean, I'll say that my biggest point of pride was that, you know, the iPad team was a startup within a startup. We really were able to pull off a pretty impossible feat with a very small team with hardware that, at the time, was really underpowered for what we needed it to be. We had a lot of engineering feats that we had to overcome as a collective group between design and engineering to make it happen and I think given that it was Steve, one of the last projects that he was really deeply involved in, I feel a lot of pride that we were able to to be successful for him in his vision and what he wanted. That's something that I hold on to as being something that I'm really proud of.

Imran: I think that the team worked at an incredibly impossible feat. It's not easy to create a new computing platform and especially one that means so many different things to so many different people. And I'm really proud of the fact that we were able to start that and have that trajectory continue through today and that this product in particular means so much to so many people. It is the way people communicate. For families with kids who suffer from autism, it allows them and allows their kids to achieve some level of comfort. Then also some level of communication. It is the way we experience our families at a distance. It's an amazing learning tool. It is so many things to so many people. And that is what great computing is all about.

Bethany: We have a daughter who's twelve and she was an iPad baby. She used an iPad super early on in her life. I think that what the iPad did was bring this level of computing to the masses in a way that the phone wasn't even able to do. You had people who were young children using iPads up to people that were a hundred years old picking up an iPad and knowing how to use it. I think it really was something that brought a lot of positive things to a lot of people. And so I think that's a really good point. Something we're really proud of.

Input: And do you have any regrets at all?

Bethany: I would say one regret is that it became really hard after we shipped the iPad to continue to push it forward in the way that I think Imran and myself and others at the company really wanted to. The gravity of the phone was so big—and it still is so big, right? It makes it really hard. Because, again, we were a small team. I think people think that we had a huge amount of people working on these products, but we were a startup within the company and the iPad was a startup within the startup. And so it became really hard, I think, to push it forward in maybe the way that I wish we could have. And so it took a little bit longer than what we would have liked to really see that platform push forward towards being more of a laptop killer, which I think we're seeing a lot of progress on now. I think one regret would be that we didn't figure out a way to keep that momentum going in a way that I would have liked.

“Steve had in his mini-brief ‘I really want to be able to use this for mail while sitting on the toilet.’”

Imran: I think what we originally envisioned was designed as a consumption device. One of the things that Steve had in his, like, mini-brief for it was "I really want to be able to use this for mail while sitting on the toilet" and that level of consumption and ease was something that went into us wanting it to replace your newspaper and wanting it to replace the books in your life. And I think the one regret that I have is that we weren't as successful in going through and replacing the textbooks that kids have to use today in school. I think we started there, but we never could really push off on that. I think a lot of that is really driven by business decisions and the gravity of the phone and the app ecosystem [being] so big. But, you know, I think our vision of making it so that kids weren't lugging around massive backpacks full of books is something that I wish we were able to do, but we weren't during our time. So maybe [now] they will think about how to move it forward—but that would be one regret.

Input: If people are interested in your new company and your new projects, is there a way they can engage with you?

Bethany: We're definitely still operating in stealth mode so that we can be focused on what we're building. But people will hear more from us in 2020, for sure.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.