xAI co-founder’s River AI raises $1.1 billion for personal agents

River AI raised $1.1 billion in a funding round led by General Catalyst and AMP, giving Igor Babuschkin’s startup major backing for its plan to build personal AI agents that learn from users and are controlled by them. The company was announced in June 2026 and is based in Palo Alto, California.

Before the deal closed, Babuschkin had been seeking up to $1 billion at a valuation as high as $5 billion. River AI describes itself as a personalized AI company built by former employees from xAI and Tesla, and its mission is to create agents that learn from each user while remaining under that user’s control.

Babuschkin has framed the pitch as a push against concentration in the AI market. His LinkedIn activity says today’s best AIs are controlled by “a few large corporations,” while River AI says it is building “a new, personal stack for AI that works entirely for you.” Babuschkin’s personal website says he wants technology that elevates rather than replaces people.

The financing also reflects the weight that founder pedigree still carries in AI fundraising. Babuschkin is an xAI co-founder, and earlier in his career he left xAI in August 2025 to start Babuschkin Ventures before later launching River AI. He also planned to invest $100 million of his own money upfront, putting his own capital behind the company at the same moment outside investors were committing billions.

River AI’s small size underscores how early the business remains. Its LinkedIn page says it was founded in 2026 and has 11-50 employees, while another company page says it had 17 associated members. That makes the scale of the financing especially striking: a tiny team, still young enough to be listed as a 2026 company, has already secured a round large enough to rival the biggest bets in the sector.

General Catalyst’s participation adds another layer to the signal. The firm says it backs ambitious entrepreneurs and has supported more than 800 businesses, including Anthropic and Mistral. Its role in the River AI round places the startup squarely inside the circle of AI companies that can attract enormous capital on the strength of elite founders, broad ambitions and the hope that personal agents will become a mainstream product before the market hardens around a handful of dominant platforms.