Simile raises $300M to build behavioral foundation models simulating human society
快鲤鱼 · wechat · 2026-09-01
Stanford spinout Simile is building a "human simulator" to help companies test market research and decisions using digital twins of real people. The company raised $100M in Series A and $200M in Series B, reaching a $2B valuation.
From Smallville to Business
Simile originated from the "Smallville" experiment. Its core thesis: while frontier LLMs have low accuracy (20%-60%) in predicting human behavior, "Behavioral Foundation Models" trained on qualitative interviews, behavioral data, and causal mechanisms can achieve over 85% accuracy. Simile allows companies to test variables in a virtual world instead of repeatedly recruiting subjects.
Vision & Costs
Simile's ultimate vision is a panoramic simulation of society with 8 billion digital twins. Despite the compute cost of large-scale simulation, it offers a better ROI compared to the high costs of traditional market research recruiting. Its services currently cover sectors like consumer goods and finance.
Related event: Simile raises $300M to simulate human behavior with digital twins(2 posts)→
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