Robinhood CEO’s AI Math Wiz Valued at $900M

Harmonic AI, the artificial intelligence startup co-founded by Robinhood Markets CEO Vlad Tenev, has raised $100 million in a Series B round, bringing its valuation to $875 million, according to Bloomberg. The Palo Alto-based company, founded in 2023 by Tenev and Tudor Achim, aims to develop AI systems capable of solving complex math problems, an area where current large language models often fall short.

The latest funding round was led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, and Paradigm. Harmonic’s focus is on building what it calls “mathematical superintelligence,” with an immediate goal of creating an AI that can outperform humans at math. Its flagship model, Aristotle, is expected to be released to researchers and the public later this year. The company’s approach relies on formal verification, a mathematical method to ensure AI outputs are correct, which Tenev says will help eliminate hallucinations that plague other AI models.

“Harmonic has created a new foundation for verified, scalable reasoning that can be trusted in high-stakes environments. I’m deeply excited about the applications of Aristotle not just for software, but for accelerating progress across science, engineering and general intelligence,” said Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner Perkins and a former physicist in a statement released on the Harmonic site. Fushman will join Harmonic’s Board of Directors as an observer.

Tenev serves as executive chairman, while Achim, formerly of Helm.ai, is CEO, according to the Bloomberg report. This funding round follows Harmonic’s previous $75 million raise from Sequoia and Index. Tenev noted that the company intentionally stayed just below the $1 billion “unicorn” threshold, stating, “You never want to take the highest offer. Optimizing for valuation is never the right choice.” The company’s ambitions extend beyond math, with plans to tackle unsolved problems in physics and computer science in the future.

“We can ensure that every piece of output and every step in our model’s reasoning is verifiably correct,” Tenev told Bloomberg. “That is just a very different approach to building AI models that I think is going to be the approach that dominates in the future.”

Recent PYMNTS coverage of Robinhood has focused on the company’s ongoing push into new financial products and its efforts to diversify revenue streams. In June, PYMNTS reported on Robinhood’s expansion of its crypto trading features and the launch of new investment tools aimed at retail investors. The financial platform announced Monday (June 30) that it was launching U.S. stock and exchange-traded fund (ETF) tokens in the European Union, giving eligible customers exposure to U.S. equities with Robinhood stock tokens.