Vals raises $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz to measure AI capabilities
Vals, a startup founded in 2024, just landed $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz to rethink how we measure what AI can actually do.
Their mission? Make sure AI is really up to the task, especially in fields like finance and law, where getting it right matters most.
As co-founder Rayan Krishnan puts it, "We were seeing a bunch of new, very capable models come to market quickly, and the academic benchmarks [were] not keeping up with that frontier advance."
Vals keeps AI test materials secret
Unlike old-school benchmarks, Vals keeps its test materials secret to prevent model training against the tests.
The company's been growing fast: revenue jumped eight times last year and the team tripled in size.
Think of their service like an SAT for AIs: companies pay for honest feedback so their models get better.
Now, Vals is branching into new areas like mental health and cybersecurity (even working with federal agencies), aiming to spot both the benefits and any unexpected side effects of smarter AI.