AI evaluation startup Braintrust secures significant funding: Braintrust, a company specializing in AI product evaluation and monitoring, has raised $36 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), valuing the startup at approximately $150 million.
Key details of the funding:
- The round was led by a16z partner Martin Casado
- Cloud leaders Databricks and Datadog also participated in the funding
- The investment values Braintrust at about $150 million, according to sources
Braintrust’s core offering:
- The startup provides software to evaluate and monitor AI product performance
- It helps companies identify and fix issues when AI tools produce nonsensical answers
- Braintrust’s software development kit (SDK) integrates with a company’s existing IT infrastructure
Impact on AI product accuracy:
- Companies using Braintrust typically see their AI products’ self-reported accuracy improve from below 40% to over 80% within weeks
- The tool allows businesses to gauge performance improvements from tweaks such as using customized prompts or switching between different AI models
Notable clients and adoption:
- Braintrust is used by several unicorn companies, including Airtable, Brex, Instacart, and Stripe
- The startup has dozens of customers, with the number doubling in the past three months
- Clients typically pay tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes exceeding $100,000 for Braintrust’s services
Founder’s background:
- Ankur Goyal, Braintrust’s founder, previously built AI infrastructure at Impira and Figma
- Goyal’s experience with in-house evaluations at these companies led to the creation of Braintrust
- He launched the startup in August 2023 after identifying a common need for AI evaluation tools across enterprises
Investor and industry support:
- Prominent AI research labs are power users of Braintrust
- The startup counts CEOs of Datadog, Hugging Face, Airtable, and Instacart among its investors
- OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo are personal backers
Competitive landscape:
- Other companies like Galileo and Humanloop are also entering the AI evaluation space
- OpenAI recently announced its own basic evaluations tools
- Investors see Braintrust as providing neutral building blocks for companies looking to work with multiple AI model providers
Future outlook and potential risks:
- Braintrust is well-positioned if AI continues to be impactful and disruptive
- The biggest risk, according to Goyal, is if AI tools fail to live up to their promise
- Investors view Braintrust as part of a new systems layer needed to make AI programming work effectively
Broader implications: As AI adoption accelerates, tools like Braintrust may become increasingly crucial for companies looking to implement and optimize AI solutions effectively, potentially shaping the landscape of AI development and integration across industries.
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