Intelligence
Category: AI Infrastructure
Creator of Design Arena, the world's largest crowdsourced benchmark for AI-generated design, providing human preference data to frontier AI labs. Intelligence was founded in 2025. The company is led by Grace Li. Based in San Francisco, USA. Team size: 11-50. Total funding raised: $7.9M. Latest round: Seed. Key investors include Index Ventures, Conviction, A*, Valkyrie, Y Combinator.
- Founded
- 2025
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, USA
- Team size
- 11-50
- Total funding
- $7.9M
Value proposition
Provides scalable human preference data for frontier AI labs by crowdsourcing A/B comparisons of AI-generated designs from millions of users, enabling models to improve on subjective qualities like taste, usability, and aesthetics.
Products and solutions
Design Arena (flagship — crowdsourced AI design benchmark), Prediction Arena (AI model prediction/uncertainty evaluation), Social Arena (AI content influence evaluation), Audio Arena (AI conversation evaluation), MicroEvals (individual evaluations of agent-generated code)
Unique value
World's first and largest crowdsourced benchmark for AI-generated design, capturing human taste and visual preference at scale — a critical complement to automated benchmarks that can be gamed or manipulated.
Target customer
Frontier AI labs and model developers seeking human preference data for training and evaluating generative models; also free consumer-facing model comparison tool for 5.3M+ users.
Industries served
AI/ML model development, Generative AI, Design, Creative tools
Technology advantage
Crowdsourced human preference data at massive scale (5.3M+ users, 190+ countries) using Bradley-Terry (Elo) rating system; tracks taste changes across continents and over time; $60M ARR at seed stage with 10-person team; YC S25 backed.
How they differentiate
Focuses specifically on design/aesthetic evaluation (websites, images, video, audio) rather than general text responses; uses live organic users rather than synthetic benchmarks; tracks geographic taste differences; monetizes via enterprise data sales to frontier labs.
Main competitors
LM Arena, Yupp (defunct)
Key partnerships
Y Combinator (S25 batch), Partnerships with frontier AI labs (unnamed) for human preference data
Notable customers
Frontier AI labs (unnamed), 5.3M+ global users across 190+ countries
Major milestones
Founded 2025 by Harvard grads, YC Summer 2025 batch, launched Design Arena, scaled from $5M to $60M ARR in 6 months, reached 5.3M+ users, raised $7.9M seed led by Index Ventures (Aug 2026)
Growth metrics
$60M ARR; 5.3M+ users across 190+ countries; 10-person team
Market positioning
Positioned as the leading source of human-led evaluation data for AI design, competing with LM Arena (text-based, raised $150M Series A) and Yupp (defunct). Claims $60M ARR at seed stage.
Geographic focus
Global (190+ countries); primarily US-based
About Grace Li
Ex-Apple Software Engineer; Harvard University CS & Neuroscience. Co-founded Intelligence after graduating from Harvard in 2025.
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Official website: https://www.intelligence.ai/