millionways Brings a New Behavioral Intelligence Lever to Executive Recruiters

September 16, 2026 – Hunt Scanlon Ventures this week completed its investment in millionways, a New York-headquartered company that builds a behavioral intelligence layer of AI for human agent workforces, utilizing a proprietary Large Psychology Model called Thorsten-4. The platform focuses on understanding human signals, motives, and behavior patterns, with applications used across AI governance, executive hiring, talent management, and enterprise environments.

“millionways is a trailblazer in this newly emerging space,” said Scott A. Scanlon, CEO and co-founder of Hunt Scanlon Ventures and a senior advisor to company co-founders Martin Cordsmeier and Max Weidemann. “As investors, we see behavioral intelligence as a new layer of AI infrastructure, giving artificial intelligence a missing layer – the ability to interpret the human dynamics behind communication and decision-making. In our view, organizations that can better understand the convergence of leadership and human behavior patterns will create meaningful competitive advantage in the years ahead. Behavioral intelligence will become central to everyday enterprise decision-making,” he said.

Mr. Scanlon noted that artificial intelligence is already making big inroads and reshaping the human capital sector. “Organizations have embraced AI to automate workflows, improve performance, and generate insights on people. As those capabilities mature, the next phase is poised to move beyond productivity and efficiency toward improving the quality of human judgement,” he said. “Reducing this friction is an essential next step for businesses in general, but a critical one for the human capital ecosystem.”

Behavioral Intelligence is a New Enterprise Value Lever

“Across executive search, leadership advisory, and private equity, lasting value is rarely driven by data alone,” said Mr. Scanlon. “It depends on understanding people—their motivations, communication styles, leadership tendencies, and ability to perform in complex environments. As AI becomes more deeply embedded within enterprise workflows. Understanding human behavior may prove as valuable as understanding financial or operational performance.”

That realization is giving rise to an emerging category in enterprise AI: behavioral intelligence. Rather than simply producing information, behavioral intelligence is already providing insight into how individuals think, communicate, collaborate, and make decisions—giving organizations better context for hiring, leadership development, succession planning, risk management, and investment decisions. “Those are not small efficiency gains,” said Mr. Scanlon. “Those are enterprise value levers.”

millionways sits at that intersection. Through its Large Psychology Model, the company has developed AI designed to understand communication patterns, motivation, leadership tendencies, and interpersonal dynamics. “We see the ability to translate human behavior into actionable business intelligence as increasingly important across the human capital markets,” said Mr. Scanlon.

“This investment reflects our broader conviction about where value is being created,” he said. “As AI becomes ubiquitous, technology alone will become less differentiating. Greater opportunity may lie in technologies that help organizations understand people, strengthen critical decisions, and improve performance. Behavioral intelligence—and millionways’ approach—is an important step in that evolution,” he noted.

Applications Across Executive Talent

To be sure, artificial intelligence is entering a new phase in the people business. Once focused primarily on accelerating candidate research, generating scorecards, and streamlining hiring processes – the technology is increasingly zeroing in on deeper adaptations to not only solve problems faster, but to decide outcomes by helping improve human judgment and decision-making across the enterprise.

Across executive search, leadership advisory, private equity and enterprise operations, organizations increasingly need to understand not only what people have accomplished, but how they communicate to team members, respond to pressure, build trust, and make decisions.

millionways is an early leader defining the burgeoning world of behavioral intelligence which can, among a host of things, transform conversations into structured insight. “Legacy leaders in the leadership assessment space have done this for decades, but not at the scale or depth that comes with AI,” said Drew Seaman, a managing director at Hunt Scanlon Ventures.

From Productivity to Judgment

Through its proprietary Large Psychology Model dubbed Thorsten-4, millionways is already identifying behavioral patterns that can provide enterprises with an extraordinary layer of evidence when evaluating leaders, organizational readiness, and human performance. Underlying Thorsten-4 is more than a decade of proprietary psychological R&D, including 25,000+ hours of structured human interaction and a dataset built with more than 7,000 participants and 50+ psychologists. This proprietary scientific and data foundation would require substantial time and investment to recreate internally.

Unlike traditional AI models designed primarily to generate content or automate workflows, behavioral intelligence is focused on interpreting the dynamics behind human interaction. That distinction becomes particularly valuable in environments where decision quality—not workflow speed— determines outcomes.

Leadership assessment, succession planning, executive coaching, management diligence, and increasingly human-agent collaboration all depend on understanding how people think and perform in different contexts. Behavioral intelligence has the potential to make those historically subjective evaluations more structured without replacing the experience and judgment of trusted advisors.

A New Lens for Enterprise Value

“From a pure value perspective, the implications extend beyond recruiting. As strategic acquirers and investors increasingly reward businesses with proprietary intelligence and differentiated data assets, platforms capable of improving high-value decisions may become increasingly attractive,” said Mr. Seaman.

Related: HelloSky Bringing AI Into the Core Workflows of Executive Search Firms

“For private equity investors, for example, behavioral intelligence could provide another lens for management diligence, CEO succession, leadership alignment, organizational readiness, and post-close execution. For executive search firms, it can complement recruiter judgment with additional evidence when evaluating leadership potential and organizational fit,” he added.

As adoption expands, said Mr. Scanlon, the value of behavioral intelligence may increasingly come from its ability to connect insights across traditionally separate decisions. “Leadership assessment, management diligence, succession planning, and organizational performance are often evaluated independently, yet each is interconnected and depends on understanding how people communicate, lead, and respond to change,” he noted. A common behavioral intelligence layer could give organizations a more consistent framework for evaluating those dynamics across the enterprise.

Whether behavioral intelligence ultimately develops into a standalone software category or becomes part of the underlying infrastructure of enterprise AI remains to be seen. What is becoming clearer is that the next generation of AI platforms may be judged not simply by how much work they automate, but by how effectively they help organizations make better decisions.

In the following interview, Mr. Weidemann, co-founder and CTO of millionways, discusses why behavioral intelligence could represent the next phase of AI and how it may reshape executive search, leadership assessment, private equity diligence, and decision-making across the enterprise.

Max, everyone across the human capital sector has spent the last two years talking about generative AI and workflow automation. Why do you believe behavioral intelligence represents the next phase of AI?

Generative AI has been extraordinary at producing content, automating tasks, and accelerating workflows. But as AI moves deeper into the enterprise, the next question is not simply, “Can the system generate an answer?” It is, “Can the system understand the human context around the decision?” That is where behavioral intelligence comes in. The last phase of AI was about productivity. The next phase is about judgment, trust, and interaction. Enterprises are beginning to deploy AI into high-stakes environments: hiring, leadership assessment, sales, customer interactions, investment decisions, coaching, governance, and human-agent workflows. In each of those settings, the hardest problem is not the workflow itself. It is understanding how people think, decide, respond to pressure, build trust, lose confidence, avoid conflict, or create friction. As AI agents become part of the workforce, this becomes even more important. Companies will need to understand not only what an agent did, but how the interaction affected the human on the other side. Did the agent build trust or create hesitation? Did it reduce friction or escalate confusion? Did it support a better decision or push someone in the wrong direction? Behavioral intelligence gives AI a missing layer: the ability to interpret the human dynamics behind communication and decisions. That is what allows AI to move from task automation to decision support.

“As AI agents become part of the workforce, companies will need to understand not only what an agent did, but how the interaction affected the human on the other side. Did the agent build trust or create hesitation? Did it reduce friction or escalate confusion? Did it support a better decision or push someone in the wrong direction?”

What problem exists today that traditional AI models simply can’t solve?

Traditional AI models are very good at language, but they do not truly understand human behavior. They can summarize what someone said, generate a response, or infer sentiment, but they are not built to understand why someone communicates the way they do, how they make decisions under pressure, or how their behavior may change when stakes rise. That matters because in leadership, investing, hiring, and human-agent interactions, the surface language is often not the real signal. People can sound confident and still be behaviorally unstable. They can present as collaborative while avoiding conflict. They can give polished answers that mask low resilience, high decision friction, or weak follow-through. The same challenge applies to AI agents. An agent can complete a task and still create distrust, confusion, pressure, or escalation for the human interacting with it. Traditional AI systems can measure completion. Behavioral intelligence helps measure impact. Traditional AI reads the content. Behavioral intelligence reads the operating pattern underneath the content.

What’s one thing most executives misunderstand about AI?

Most executives still think about AI primarily as an automation layer. They ask, “What tasks can this replace?” That is too narrow. The more important question is, “How does AI improve the quality of decisions?” In many high-stakes environments, the goal should not be to remove the human. It should be to help the human make better, faster, more informed decisions with less bias and more context. That becomes even more important as AI agents enter the workforce. The real opportunity is not simply replacing work with agents. It is designing better human-agent systems where AI improves judgment, communication, trust, and execution. AI will automate a lot. But the bigger strategic shift is that AI will become a decision intelligence layer across the enterprise.

Where do you think this market will be three to five years from now?

In three to five years, behavioral intelligence will be a recognized category within enterprise AI. It will not sit only inside HR. It will show up in executive search, private equity, leadership advisory, sales intelligence, customer success, AI observability, agent governance, and coaching. The most advanced companies will not just ask what employees, customers, candidates, or executives say. They will analyze how people communicate, how they respond to pressure, how trust forms, and how decision patterns evolve over time. I also think behavioral intelligence will become increasingly important as AI agents become more common. When humans and agents work together, companies will need to understand the behavioral quality of those interactions, not just whether the workflow was completed. The next generation of AI governance will not only ask whether an agent followed policy. It will ask whether the agent created trust, reduced friction, supported good judgment, and improved the human outcome.

“The next generation of AI governance will not only ask whether an agent followed policy. It will ask whether the agent created trust, reduced friction, supported good judgment, and improved the human outcome.”

What’s one prediction you would make about leadership and AI that most people don’t yet believe?

Within five years, the best leaders will not be the ones who simply know how to use AI tools. They will be the ones who understand how to lead mixed human-agent systems. That means knowing when to trust AI, when to challenge it, when to bring humans back into the loop, and how to manage the behavioral impact of AI on teams, customers, candidates, and clients. Leadership will become less about managing only people and more about managing the interaction between people, agents, data, and decisions. Behavioral intelligence will be critical because the hardest part of AI adoption will not be technical. It will be human.

“Leadership will become less about managing only people and more about managing the interaction between people, agents, data, and decisions.”

If we revisit this conversation in 2030, what role do you believe behavioral intelligence will be playing across executive search, leadership advisory, and private equity?

By 2030, behavioral intelligence will be a core layer across executive search, leadership advisory, private equity, and the broader human-agent workforce. In executive search, it will help firms evaluate candidates beyond resumes and interviews. In leadership advisory, it will help coaches and consultants understand how leaders operate under pressure and where they can improve. In private equity, it will support diligence, succession, team assessment, board construction, and portfolio value creation. And as AI agents become embedded into work, behavioral intelligence will help companies understand how those agents are affecting the humans around them. Are they increasing trust or creating friction? Are they improving decision quality or creating hidden risk? Are they supporting leadership, customers, candidates, and employees in the right way? The common thread is that these markets all depend on high-stakes human judgment. Behavioral intelligence gives those markets a way to make that judgment more structured, more scalable, and more predictive. The firms that adopt it early will have an advantage because they will be able to see patterns that others are still interpreting through intuition alone.

“In executive search, behavioral intelligence will help firms evaluate candidates beyond resumes and interviews. In leadership advisory, it will help coaches and consultants understand how leaders operate under pressure and where they can improve. In private equity, it will support diligence, succession, team assessment, board construction, and portfolio value creation.”

You mention intuition. Executive recruiters have always relied heavily on intuition. How will that now change?

Executive search will always require judgment, relationships, and context. Behavioral intelligence does not replace that. It strengthens it. Over the next four to five years, behavioral intelligence will become a standard layer in leadership assessment, especially for senior roles where the cost of a bad decision is high. Search firms will still evaluate track records, references, experience, compensation, and fit. But they will increasingly want a more objective view into how a candidate thinks, decides, handles pressure, builds trust, regulates stress, and collaborates with other leaders. This fits a broader shift already happening in the industry. Clients are no longer asking only, “Who can fill this role?” They are asking, “What leadership risk are we carrying? Where are succession vulnerabilities forming? Which executives can create value through transformation? Which leaders will struggle when conditions change?” Those are talent intelligence questions, not just recruiting questions. The biggest opportunity is not to replace the recruiter’s intuition. It is to make that intuition more evidence-based. Behavioral intelligence can surface patterns that are difficult to detect in interviews alone, especially when candidates are polished, coached, or highly practiced. Search firms will still evaluate track records, references, experience, compensation, and fit. But they will increasingly want a more objective view into how a candidate thinks, decides, handles pressure, builds trust, regulates stress, and collaborates with other leaders.

“Search firms will still evaluate track records, references, experience, compensation, and fit. But they will increasingly want a more objective view into how a candidate thinks, decides, handles pressure, builds trust, regulates stress, and collaborates with other leaders.”

What’s the ultimate impact we can expect from AI on executive hiring?

AI changes executive search by giving recruiters more leverage across the full decision process. It can help identify talent, analyze markets, summarize candidate materials, prepare interview questions, and improve client communication. But the deeper opportunity is decision quality. Behavioral intelligence helps recruiters understand not just whether a candidate has done the job before, but how they are likely to operate in the next environment. Will they thrive in ambiguity? Will they fracture under pressure? Will they build alignment with the board? Will they over-control the team? Will they move fast enough? Will they adapt to a founder-led culture, a public company environment, or a private equity operating cadence? The recruiter becomes more valuable, not less, because they can combine human judgment with a richer behavioral data layer. The best search professionals will not be replaced by AI. They will become more consultative because AI will allow them to bring stronger evidence, sharper insight, and more conviction into client conversations.

Will behavioral intelligence become as important as resumes and career history when evaluating senior executives?

Yes. I think behavioral intelligence will become as important as career history because career history tells you what someone has done, while behavioral intelligence helps explain how they are likely to do it again in a new context. It is future-forward. At the senior executive level, most candidates already have impressive resumes. The real question is rarely, “Are they accomplished?” It is, “Will their decision style, pressure response, leadership pattern, and interpersonal dynamics fit this company, this board, this market, and this moment?” A resume is backward-looking. Behavioral intelligence is predictive. The best leadership decisions will use both.

Private equity firms spend enormous time evaluating management teams before making investments. How do you think behavioral intelligence changes diligence?

Behavioral intelligence can make management diligence more structured, repeatable, and predictive. Today, PE firms spend significant time with management teams, but much of the evaluation still depends on subjective impressions. Is the CEO credible? Is the CFO precise? Is the team aligned? Is there hidden conflict? Can this group execute the value creation plan? Will the founder scale? Will the leadership team hold together under pressure? Behavioral intelligence gives firms a way to evaluate those questions using real communication data. It can analyze interviews, management presentations, earnings calls, board materials, and operating discussions to identify patterns around confidence stability, decision speed, stress response, dominance, collaboration, strategic clarity, and execution risk. That does not replace diligence. It adds a new lens that can help investors see around corners before capital is deployed.

Beyond hiring, where do you see firms using behavioral intelligence?

Hiring is only the starting point. For private equity, the broader opportunity is across the full investment lifecycle. Behavioral intelligence can support CEO succession, executive coaching, founder transition planning, management team assessment, board appointments, post-acquisition integration, leadership alignment, and portfolio company performance improvement. It can also help firms understand where friction may emerge between a CEO and CFO, between a founder and professional management team, or between the board and operating leadership. Over time, I think behavioral intelligence becomes part of the operating playbook. It will help firms answer: Do we have the right team for the next phase? Where will this team break under pressure? Which leaders need coaching? Which executives are best suited for scale, turnaround, integration, or transformation? As AI agents become more embedded in portfolio company operations, this will extend beyond human teams. Firms will also want to understand how humans and agents work together: whether agents are improving trust, reducing friction, increasing decision quality, or creating new risk inside customer, employee, and leadership workflows.

“Over time, I think behavioral intelligence becomes part of the operating playbook. It will help firms answer: Do we have the right team for the next phase? Where will this team break under pressure? Which leaders need coaching? Which executives are best suited for scale, turnaround, integration, or transformation?”

If behavioral intelligence becomes widely adopted, how does it ultimately influence enterprise value?

It influences enterprise value by improving the quality of high-stakes people decisions. A bad CEO hire, a dysfunctional leadership team, a failed integration, or an unresolved succession issue can destroy enormous value. Conversely, the right leadership team can accelerate growth, improve execution, reduce attrition, strengthen culture, and increase the probability that the value creation plan actually happens. Behavioral intelligence helps investors and companies reduce avoidable people risk. It can improve hiring accuracy, leadership alignment, coaching effectiveness, board composition, succession planning, and organizational execution. It can also help companies measure whether AI agents are improving or damaging the quality of human interactions. If behavioral intelligence becomes embedded into operating decisions, it becomes a value creation tool, not just an HR tool.

Related: Hunt Scanlon Launches HSiQ Talent Intelligence Advisory Unit

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor  – Hunt Scanlon Media