Vals AI, a San Francisco-based provider of an AI evaluation and model auditing platform, raised $40 million in Series A funding at a $400 million valuation, in a round led by a16z with participation from existing backers 8VC and Bloomberg Beta, alongside new investors HRT Ventures and Next Ladder Ventures. The company plans to use the funding to scale its testing infrastructure, expand enterprise customer acquisition globally, and grow its engineering and machine learning teams.
Co-founded by Rayan Krishnan and Langston Nashold, Vals AI operates an independent, domain-specific evaluation platform designed to verify AI model capabilities through automated benchmark testing. The platform subjects AI systems to complex, unscripted tasks across regulated industries including corporate law, banking, engineering, and healthcare, serving as an impartial auditor for enterprises, research labs, and governments by identifying hallucinations, security vulnerabilities, and comparative model performance ahead of deployment.
Alongside the funding, the company announced several new releases, including Vals Smith, a tool allowing users to build custom coding benchmarks from any GitHub repository, and a set of Frontier Risk Benchmarks featuring an RSI Index developed in collaboration with CoreWeave, a new cybersecurity benchmark built with academic researchers, and early work on mental health evaluation. The company also relaunched its website and introduced an expanded Vals Index covering broader economic sectors.
Featured image: Credit: Vals AI
