San Francisco · On-site · $120-180k
Unusual
Backed byY CombinatorAbout Unusual
Unusual helps brands understand how LLMs talk about them and provides tools to change those representations. It defines and aims to lead Brand Engineering, a field that measures LLMs' opinions of a brand and quantifies brand performance relative to peers. Its mission includes helping people control their own narrative rather than large AI companies. The company is led by cofounders Will Jack, CEO, and Keller Maloney, with Sarah Xu as Head of GTM, and the team includes alumni from MIT, Princeton, and SpaceX. Will Jack has been involved in NLP research since 2014 with experience at SpaceX and MIT and was the first to commercialize AI code generation in 2019 on HBO’s Silicon Valley, while Keller Maloney has built AI applications since 2019, graduating cum laude in Econometrics from Princeton and serving as a D1 All-American water polo captain. Sarah Xu has driven 10x growth at Circle Medical (YC W17) and built Ambience Healthcare’s GTM from pre-revenue, contributing to about $350M raised by Oak HC/FT, Kleiner Perkins, OAI, and a16z, and has designed growth engines at Google that scaled revenue 5–10x.
Open positions · 2
Los Angeles · On-site · $140-185k
Company at a glance
Locations
San Francisco, United States ·Los Angeles, United States ·New York City, United States
Websiteunusual.ai
LinkedInLinkedIn
Founders & Leadership
Location
About the Team
Team Distribution
- Leadership25%
- Design25%
- Business Operations25%
- Specialized25%
Where the Team Studied
- 1.Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 2.Princeton University
- 3.University of Oxford
- 4.Columbia University
- 5.University of Massachusetts Amherst
Team Worked At
- SpaceX
- Ares Management Corporation
Team Composition
3 people- Arts and Design1
- Entrepreneurship1 senior1
- Leadership1 senior1
Culture & values
Engineering team focuses on reverse engineering sources, implicit biases, and reasoning patterns that guide model behavior
Team is driven by mission to help people control their own narrative rather than large AI companies
Company works on applied interpretability research
Funding History
SeedJan 2026
$3.6M
raised
AI brand-alignment startup Unusual raised a $3.6 million seed round from BoxGroup, Long Journey Ventures, Y Combinator, Instacart co-founder Max Mullen, and Phosphor Capital.
Y CombinatorPhosphor CapitalLong Journey VenturesBoxGroup
Life at Unusual
Frequently asked questions
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