AI Benchmarking Startup Vals Raises $40M Series A Led by Andreessen Horowitz
aiinsider ·
AI benchmarking startup Vals has successfully raised $40 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company, founded in 2024, aims to provide more rigorous evaluation systems for artificial intelligence models than traditional academic benchmarks. Co-founder Rayan Krishnan noted that the initiative arose from observing that existing tests were failing to keep pace with rapidly advancing frontier models. Unlike competitors that use public tests, Vals keeps its evaluation materials secret to prevent companies from overfitting their models to specific datasets. The platform assesses AI capabilities across real-world industries such as law, finance, and coding, while also monitoring risks in cybersecurity and biosecurity. Revenue for the startup has grown eightfold year-over-year, leading to a tripling of its workforce to 25 employees. Additionally, Vals has launched a program to offer model evaluations to federal agencies, anticipating that such benchmarks will become crucial for AI companies pursuing public offerings.
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