Vals, a startup formed in 2024, has raised $40 million in a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, the company's co-founder Rayan Krishnan said. The funding follows a seed round led by 8VC and Bloomberg Beta last year.
Vals aims to address what Krishnan describes as legacy benchmarking systems falling behind modern AI models. Unlike many benchmarking systems that offer publicly available tests, Vals does not publicly disclose its specific test materials. Instead of measuring general knowledge, it evaluates models on their ability to complete complex tasks associated with specific industries such as law, finance and coding.
Krishnan said the company is also pushing into areas including recursive self-improvement, mental health, cybersecurity, biosecurity and the law of armed conflict. Companies pay Vals to test their models, and Krishnan compared the revenue model to a student paying the College Board to take the SAT.
The startup recently revealed that its revenue is currently eight times what it was last year. Vals started the year with eight people and has tripled to a team of 25. Krishnan said the plan is to relocate to a significantly bigger office and bring on an additional 10 to 15 people. The company also recently launched a program centred around providing model evaluations to federal agencies.