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Hassaan Raza
Co-founder and CEO · Tavus
AI humans Conversational video
Raza is trying to make computers conversational face to face, and Tavus raised $40 million from CRV, Sequoia, and others to build the models that make AI humans look and respond like people.
Hassaan Raza is co-founder and CEO of Tavus, a San Francisco AI research lab whose platform lets developers build AI humans that see, hear, and talk in real time. His own site describes Tavus as a lab “focused on human computing, the pursuit of teaching machines how to be human.”
A Start at HP at Sixteen
Raza’s site says he started at HP at 16, in 2014 and 2015, and that the job “almost turned me away from tech,” which he blames on being “an edgy teen.” He later started a product studio, worked across a few industries as a software engineer, and went to the University of Texas for computer science.
Apple, Google, and Then Tavus
In 2018 he led security and operating-system projects for macOS at Apple, and from 2019 to 2021 he worked at Google on Google Cloud and machine learning, his site says. Since 2021 he has led Tavus, which his site describes as building frontier human-simulation models and invisible human-computer interfaces.
The $40 Million Series B
Tavus announced a $40 million Series B in November 2025, led by CRV with Scale Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, HubSpot Ventures, and Flex Capital, alongside the launch of PALs. “We’ve spent decades forcing humans to learn to speak the language of machines,” Raza said in the announcement. “With PALs, we’re finally teaching machines to think like humans.” His site also lists a Forbes 30 Under 30 mention and TechCrunch coverage of an $18 million Series A.
