Ex-Meta AI director raises $10.25M seed for stealth physical AI startup
What's the deal? Noosphere LabsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Seattle-area startup led by former Meta AI research director Kevin Carlberg, has raised $10.25 million in seed funding. Trilogy Equity PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → led the round, with Madrona Venture Group confirming "major participation." Carlberg disclosed the financing in a Form D filed in August 2026 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
What's the endgame? The company is building what it calls "human-centered physical intelligence" — AI designed to help people interact with and make sense of the physical world, beyond text and images on screens. Its website reads: "Human-centered physical intelligence. Built for the world we inhabit," with a "Coming Soon" note.
Why now? Carlberg left Meta at the end of 2024, took a sabbatical, and incorporated NoosphereDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → Labs in 2026. At Meta, he led a research team spanning Reality Labs Research and the Fundamental AI Research group, working on physical AI and simulation for wearables and mixed-reality devices.
Reached by phone in August 2026, Carlberg said he wasn't yet ready to share details. His personal website describes him as founder and chief executive officer of a "stealth AI startup focused on physical AI and real-world intelligence."
The context: In a NeurIPS paper published in 2025, Carlberg and Meta colleagues built a benchmark for "assistive wearable agents" — smart glasses that infer what a person wants from video, audio, and other signals. Testing against a dataset from 348 participants, the best models gave a relevant answer only 55% of the time. The researchers concluded that current models "remain far from practical usefulness."
Who else is involved? The Form D lists Amy McCullough, a managing director at Bellevue-based Trilogy Equity PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, as a director. Also named is Tyler Simpson, a Seattle-area software executive who co-founded commute-management startup LuumDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, spent 11 years at Microsoft, and was most recently a director and technical programme manager at Meta, overlapping with Carlberg.
Before Meta, Carlberg spent eight years at Sandia National LaboratoriesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → developing methods to run massive physics simulations in near-real time for national security work. He holds a doctorate from Stanford UniversityDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and is an affiliate associate professor of applied mathematics and mechanical engineering at the University of WashingtonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
The signal: At $10.25 million, the seed is a sizeable early-stage bet on a founder and a category still short of practical products. Noosphere is wagering that AI can move off screens and into the physical world, and its backers are betting early on the team to get there.
Image credit: Noosphere
Read more: MSN
