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Soothlabs

Pittsburgh, US · Founded 2026 · 16 employees on LinkedIn · 5 known investors

Sooth develops a foresight engine that uses AI and machine learning to deliver calibrated probabilistic forecasts for organizations facing strategic decisions under uncertainty. The platform helps leaders across institutions anticipate geopolitical, market, and supply chain disruptions by reasoning across interconnected domains and continuously improving predictions against real-world outcomes.

Also known as Sooth · Sooth Labs

Founders & leadership

Soothlabs was founded in 2026 by Chuck Hoover.

CHChuck Hoover
Chuck HooverFounder

Investors · 5

Also in the syndicate · 4

Ardent Venture PartnersFelicisleadJeff DeanYann LeCun

Company profile

researched Aug 2026

Sooth Labs (Sooth) is a Pittsburgh-based AI company developing what it calls a global foresight engine: a continuously trained world model intended to produce calibrated probability estimates for long-horizon, cross-domain questions. The company frames existing forecasting as fragmented — prediction markets cover discrete events, time-series models project trends, financial markets price risk, and climate models simulate physical systems — with no single system reasoning about how those domains interact. It argues that large language models, optimized for plausible next-token prediction, do not maintain a persistent world model, learn continuously from outcomes, or generate properly scored probabilities.

The product is described in three components. The Sooth Engine is a continuously trained world model that integrates economic, geopolitical, and operational signals into a unified representation, showing how risks propagate across markets, supply chains, and regions. Sooth Chronology uses autonomous agents to collect and prioritize signals relevant to a customer's decisions, capturing events as they occur and identifying coverage gaps. Sooth Proof cryptographically commits each forecast before outcomes are known, creating an auditable performance record; the company states its probabilities are calibrated such that events assigned a 70% probability occur roughly 70% of the time.

Example questions shown on the company's site span grid capacity constraints on U.S. AI infrastructure, Iranian nuclear escalation, deposit beta through an easing cycle, insured hurricane losses, OPEC+ production discipline, reserve-currency composition, GLP-1 drug revenue, Panama Canal reliability, U.S. office vacancy, Taiwan Strait escalation, Eurozone core inflation, voluntary carbon market regulation, semiconductor supply concentration, LBO returns, enterprise pipeline conversion, yen carry-trade unwind, and copper prices.

Founding story

The company was co-founded by Yaser Sheikh, Russ Salakhutdinov, and Chuck Hoover, a team drawn from large-scale industrial AI research. Sheikh founded and scaled Meta's Pittsburgh AI organization over roughly a decade, moving it from pure research into shipped products including Codec Avatars, and is a Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute faculty member and author of OpenPose and Panoptic Studio. Salakhutdinov completed his PhD under Geoffrey Hinton, was Apple's first Director of AI Research, later served as VP of Research in Generative AI at Meta, and is among the most-cited active machine learning researchers. Hoover directed billion-dollar innovation programs at Meta and leads product strategy and execution at Sooth. An investor account of the founding rationale cites decades of foundational infrastructure work by the team plus newly available compute and data as the reasons a continuously trained world model is now viable.

Business model

The company markets an enterprise offering, inviting prospective institutional customers to request a briefing rather than self-serve signup.

Traction

The company has closed a seed round backed by institutional venture investors and prominent AI research angels, and has assembled a founding team from Meta, Apple, and Carnegie Mellon. Public product metrics have not been disclosed.

Latest developments

In June 2026, Ardent Venture Partners publicly disclosed its participation in Sooth Labs' seed round alongside Felicis, with Yann LeCun and Jeff Dean investing as angels and Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth serving as an advisor.

Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography

Market position

Sooth is an early-stage, seed-funded entrant in cross-domain probabilistic forecasting, competing with single-domain specialist forecasting platforms and with simulation-based prediction startups such as Aaru and Simile.

Sooth positions its differentiation in the underlying architecture rather than domain-specific tooling: a world model trained across domains, optimized for calibration, and updated continuously as events unfold. An investor writeup contrasts this with simulation-based approaches that model individual behavior bottom-up and aggregate to predictions, arguing such methods break down on tail events where the required individual-level accuracy is unattainable. It also distinguishes the approach from LLM-based forecasting workflows, which are optimized for plausible text rather than properly scored probabilities. Pre-commitment of forecasts via cryptographic proof is presented as a verifiable accountability mechanism.

Technology

Sooth's architecture centers on a continuously trained world model for long-horizon, cross-domain forecasting. It comprises a multimodal encoder that ingests unstructured text and structured time series simultaneously; a forecaster that optimizes in latent world-state space rather than for direct output accuracy; and foresight engines that expose the model through a chat interface supporting queries, counterfactuals, and scenario planning. Autonomous agents continuously ingest and prioritize signals, and forecasts are cryptographically committed prior to outcome resolution to create a verifiable calibration record.

Go-to-market

Prospective customers are asked to contact the company for a briefing, in which Sooth presents how its forecasting system would apply to the organization's decisions; the company does not publicly list pricing or self-service access.

Sooth targets institutions making high-stakes decisions under uncertainty. Illustrative users referenced by the company include industrial company CEOs, intelligence analysts, bank asset-liability desks, insurance chief risk officers, energy trading desks, sovereign wealth fund CIOs, pharmaceutical executives, supply chain leaders, real estate investment committees, defense strategic planners, central bankers, climate risk strategists, industry analysts, private equity partners, chief revenue officers, hedge fund portfolio managers, corporate CFOs, and venture capital investors.

Geography

Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.

Compiled by commissioned research from 4 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.

Competitors · 4

by search overlap

Companies competing with Soothlabs for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.

Timeline · 2

launches, deals, and filings
Jun 2026
Ardent Venture Partners discloses seed investment in Sooth Labs alongside Felicis

Ardent Venture Partners published a post stating it invested in Sooth Labs' seed round alongside Felicis, with Yann LeCun (Meta Chief AI Scientist) and Jeff Dean (Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind) participating as angels.

source ↗

Jun 2026
Andrew Bosworth advising Sooth Labs

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth is serving as an advisor to the company.

source ↗

Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.

Research sources · 4

primary sources listed

4 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.

Frequently asked questions

What does Soothlabs do?
Sooth Labs builds a continuously trained world model that produces calibrated, cross-domain probabilistic forecasts for institutions.
Who founded Soothlabs?
Soothlabs was founded by Chuck Hoover in 2026.
Who are Soothlabs's investors?
Soothlabs's investors include Ardent Venture.
Where is Soothlabs headquartered?
Soothlabs is headquartered in Pittsburgh, US.