The humanoid robot, known as Uri, made its debut last week at Harvard University, drawing massive attention as the new CMO led Series’ first campus marketing campaign. 

From taking over Harvard Square with a giant student composite banner to parading the stands during the Harvard versus Brown football game, Uri quickly became the centre of attraction. The spectacle generated more than one million views across social media within 24 hours.

Uri, powered by the Unitree G1 humanoid system, is built with 43 degrees of freedom, 3D LiDAR sensors, depth cameras, and reinforcement learning that allows it to adapt to real-time human interactions. It stands 1.2 metres tall and has been programmed to engage with users both offline and online in ways that mimic human marketers.

During the campaign, Uri didn’t just pose for photos, the robot handed out matcha drinks to students, initiated conversations, and roamed the stadium stands, a mix of spectacle and brand promotion that left many in awe.

Nathaneo Johnson, CEO and co-founder of Series, explained the logic behind the appointment. “Most CMOs cost $100k – $300k a year. Ours is a fraction of that, and it gains more attention than most celebrities do in any given room. That’s marketing.”

Series, launched as a platform to connect students and professionals, has already facilitated more than 700,000 messages exchanged with a 95% match acceptance rate. The company says that Uri is more than a novelty act, but part of a long-term strategy to enhance how technology can drive human connection.

Johnson added: “This move reflects our belief that robotics and AI will co-create the future of connection. Uri’s capabilities are far beyond novelty, which reflects the culture of constant innovation that will come to define today’s most ambitious startups.”

In placing robotics at the centre of its growth, Series is testing how far human-robot collaboration can go, not just in automating tasks, but in building strategy and public engagement. For a generation that thrives on digital-first interaction, Uri may be the next frontier of marketing leadership.

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To tackle this, Series has launched its AI-powered social platform that’s reinventing how college students connect, securing $3M in pre-seed funding to create a network built on meaningful relationships 

The team raised $3M in funding for its pre-seed round led by Parable (former a16z investor, Anne Lee Skates) with participation from Pear VC, Tim Draper’s DGB.VC, 47th Street (Jaren Glover, ex-Robinhood), Radicle Impact, Uncommon Projects, and notable angels, including the CEO of Reddit (Steve Huffman), the founder of GPTZero (Edward Tian), and others. 

The funding journey reads like a startup fairy tale: just two weeks ago, co-founder Nathaneo Johnson posted a trailer on LinkedIn about Series that went viral in the college entrepreneurial community. 

After an initial Zoom call with Anne Lee Skates (who started her fund after leaving a16z), Johnson and co-founder Sean Hargrow – both juniors at Yale – immediately flew to Silicon Valley to begin fundraising. What happened next defied conventional startup timelines for college founders: they closed their round in just 14 days.

Series is the first networking platform that uses AI Friends to make warm, double opt-in introductions across different networks. These AI Friends operate directly in iMessage and become personalized towards each user, making intros autonomously or on demand. 

Unlike existing platforms, Series creates connections only when there’s mutual value on both sides – eliminating the biases perpetuated by follower counts and engagement metrics. The platform requires a .edu email to join, creating a trusted ecosystem where students text their AI Friend about themselves and who they know, receiving a minimalist profile showcasing their warm network.

“The problem of quantifying value online isn’t a recent development – it started with Facebook back in ’04. Not to say these platforms don’t build great communities, but they embody the narrative that online metrics equate to real world value” said Nathaneo Johnson, co-founder & CEO of Series. 

“We’re 6’5”, Black, and technical – a direct foil to the Harvard story. And that difference is the reason Series tells a new story of how people connect online.”

Series’ revolutionary approach addresses a fundamental issue in modern social networking: people rely on biased guesswork and social proof to decide whom to connect with, and over time, making connections feels like charity. 

The company’s solution is an AI system that intelligently identifies potential matches based on genuine mutual benefit – no likes, followers, or vanity metrics – just smart, agentic networking where much of Gen Z already lives: iMessage.

The company’s journey began with The Founder Series Podcast, where founders Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow interviewed Yale entrepreneurs, accumulating over 500k views. 

This evolved into a viral web chatbot that facilitated curated introductions based on mutual value, gaining immediate traction at Yale and Princeton. With the official launch of Series in 2025, the platform has already recorded over 32,000 messages sent and received by AI Friends.

The platform’s ability to create natural human connections through AI has already resonated with early users: “I forgot it (the AI friend) wasn’t a real person. That was until I connected to a real person in the form of a minimalist profile my AI Friend (Oliver) had texted me. It was awesome,” reported Rich Zou, a student at Northeastern who uses Series for hosting hackathons.

“Once we capture the college entrepreneurial market, we’ll expand to finance, dating, education, health, and more. All of these fields in the student space rely on trust, access, and social capital,” explained Johnson. 

“Our long-term vision is to become the largest and most accessible warm network for just about anything – one billion AI Friends in the next decade. Social connection is broken; we’re rebuilding it with AI that acts like a well-connected friend in your pocket making connections to who you need, when you need, IRL.”

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