Vals Raises $40 Million from Andreessen Horowitz to Sell Model Rating as a Paid Review

Founded in 2024 by 25-year-old Rayan Krishnan, the company keeps its test sets confidential and charges laboratories that want to be evaluated. Its turnover has increased eightfold in one year.

The public rankings of models suffer from a structural defect: as soon as a test circulates, it ends up in the training data. Vals, founded in 2024 by Rayan Krishnan, 25, who spent an internship with Palantir and then with Microsoft and Stanford's AI laboratory, draws an opposite method: never publish its evaluation materials.

Society does not assess the general culture of a model but its ability to carry out real tasks in identified sectors — law, finance, software development, cybersecurity, biosecurity, mental health. The business model borrows from the standardized exam: it is companies that pay to be evaluated, as American students pay the College Board to pass the SAT. Today, sales are eight times higher than last year.

After a launch in 2025 by 8VC and Bloomberg Beta, Vals completed in August 2026 an A series of $40 million led by Andreessen Horowitz. The workforce has increased from eight at the beginning of the year to twenty-five, with 10 to 15 additional recruits planned, and the company has just opened an evaluation program for US federal agencies.