Life, the Universe, and Simile: Leading Simile’s Series A

When I started as an intern at Index, our co-founder David Rimer gave me a copy of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He knew I loved science fiction, and despite my limited proficiency in British humor, the absurdist series has since become one of my all-time favorites.

Without spoiling too much for the uninitiated, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide it turns out that Earth is a giant supercomputer built by another supercomputer: Earth is a simulation to answer the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything. The answer, famously, is “42.” (The harder part is figuring out what the question was in the first place…)

So you can imagine my awe when Joon, cofounder & CEO of Simile, shared his bold imagination of the next act in the AI era - to simulate the entire planet. At the core of our conviction is an understanding of a team with the moral authority to bring that imagination to life.

Joon is an oil painter turned entrepreneur and has the genius to hold contradictions with comfort: deeply creative yet reliably operationally excellent; sky-high ambition yet grounded in reality; ruthlessly competitive yet humane & empathetic. And together with Percy and Michael, the founding team introduced the original concepts of generative agents, rich agentic simulations, and literally the term “foundation model.” Their character and competence have attracted a phenomenal team of talent, including folks who have been in the Index family for multiple chapters in their career, like Elaina & Mihika. There’s no one I trust more with the responsibility of this mission.

Simile partners with real people to build high-fidelity models of how each of them lives and makes decisions. These digital twins are orchestrated to answer what real people will do and why. It turns out that there is a staggering range of applications and organizations that want to ask those questions. Having had a front row seat at companies serving large enterprises, I’ve developed a feel for market pull. When the largest companies in the world, across industries and geographies, express the same pain and share similar desires, the market pull for a platform is undeniable. Personally, I haven’t experienced this level of market pull since the early days of Wiz.

The combination of imagination, an all-star team, and undeniable market demand is why we’re thrilled to lead Simile’s $100 million Series A. We believe Joon, Percy, Michael, and Lainie are building foundational infrastructure for decision-making in an AI-native world, and we couldn’t be more excited to be on this journey with them. Fellow hitchhikers, grab your towel.