We use AI to simulate large groups of people and how they interact with each other. Imagine testing a thousand versions of a sales pitch, marketing campaign, or product feature in a simulation of your target customers before launching in the real world. We make that possible.
You should try our simulations.
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Our mission is to build a societal model to enable infinite experimentation, so that people have complete awareness of outcomes before decisions.
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The right team builds the right product, and we care a lot about bringing on the right people. Beyond technical skills, we have 4 principles:
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Curiosity: Curious about customers’ challenges; curious about different disciplines; curious about new ways to grow as a person and a team.
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Humility: To us, ambition is about making our most unique and irreplaceable contribution to the world, not personal ego. This is how we build a team that works together.
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Accountability: We love working with people who take ownership of a challenge, who are confident in both asking for help and making decisions.
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Pragmatism: We might push the frontiers of knowledge, but we are not a research group. We are building a product with a ruthless focus on creating value for our customers.
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This is how we build an ambitious business that does good in the world.
James went to New Zealand on his own at age 14, and then to Cambridge to study Behavioural Sciences. There, he found a love in combining technology and humanity to ask: Can computers predict individual and collective human behaviours? He turned down a PhD in NLP at Cambridge to join Yonder Credit Card as its sole “ML guy”, while continuing to publish in computational social science. At Artificial Societies, James leads R&D, distribution, and fundraising. Outside work, he keeps a handwritten journal, plays an ancient Chinese instrument, and would never say no to some pints.
Patrick studied Economics and Behavioural Economics, before spending 5 years as an Applied Behavioural Scientist. Having spent years battling against logistical hurdles to run A/B tests in the real world, Patrick loves being able to run them effortlessly with simulations. At Artificial Societies, Patrick leads product strategy and design, taking ideas from his abstract conversations with James and turning them into something useable. Outside of work, Patrick enjoys attempting to ski, finding discounts on pricey London restaurants, and bothering James to get him to explain complex data topics.
We officially incorporated on September 18, 2024. Here are some of our key moments so far:
| Week 2 | Our first automated prototype went live: it can simulate a society of 300 AI personas based on a description, and A/B test how messages would spread. |
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| Week 7 | We began closing our $1.5m pre-seed round, led by Kindred Capital, and joined by angel investors from senior DeepMinders to Sequoia Scouts. |
| Week 11 | We were accepted into YC W25, bringing our funding to $2m. |
| Week 18 | We simulated our W25 batch-mates. Anthropic and Rippling used it to optimise their marketing and sales messaging. |
| Week 21 | We launched Reach, where anyone can create a simulation of their own LinkedIn and optimise their posts before publishing. |
| Week 25 | We completed YC W25, and raised a $3.35m seed round led by Point72 Ventures, bringing our seed-stage funding to $5.35m. |
| Week 34 | We released Mirror World, a demo of our technology where you can build an AI persona of any real person with their public social media links. |
| Week 45 | We released a brand new Artificial Societies, the first self-served social simulation platform where you can simulate any group of people and experiment how they’d react to any kinds of messages. |
| Week 50 | We released synthetic surveys that captures human opinion distribution at 86% accuracy, only 5 points below the human benchmark at 91%. |