The $2B AI Startup Simulating Human Behavior with 85% Accuracy
Oct 26, 2026 · 56:15
Simile co-founder and CEO Joon Sung Park argues AI can predict human behavior with 85%+ accuracy, explaining how his Stanford experiment Smallville, with 25 autonomous AI agents, became a $2 billion company backed by Greenoaks, Index Ventures, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrej Karpathy. Simile trains digital twins to run surveys and conjoint analysis instantly—work that once cost hundreds of thousands of dollars—for customers like CVS and Banco Itaú, drawing on partnerships covering over 40 million people. Behavior is predictable because core traits like risk tolerance don't change, while optionality governs decisions. He also simulated this interview, correctly predicting whether we live in a simulation. He closes on traits of durable success and rejects a $15 billion buyout.
