Intelligence (The Intelligence Company)
Category: AI Infrastructure
The Intelligence Company builds Design Arena, the world's largest crowdsourced benchmark for AI-generated design, using human-preference data to evaluate and improve frontier AI models. Intelligence (The Intelligence Company) was founded in 2025. The company is led by Grace Li. Based in San Francisco, California, 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, California, USA
- Team size
- 11-50
- Total funding
- $7.9M
Value proposition
Provides scalable human-preference evaluation data for frontier AI labs by crowdsourcing A/B comparisons of AI-generated outputs (websites, images, audio, video) from 5.5M+ users across 190+ countries, complementing automated benchmarks that can be gamed.
Products and solutions
Design Arena (AI design evaluation/benchmark platform), Prediction Arena (AI prediction/trading evaluation on Kalshi), Social Arena (AI social content influence evaluation), Audio Arena (AI conversation evaluation)
Unique value
World's first crowdsourced benchmark for AI design, turning human taste into infrastructure for AI model evaluation. Users rank outputs from competing models, and frontier labs pay for this preference data to improve their media-generating models.
Target customer
Frontier AI labs and enterprises building media-generating models; non-enterprise users use Design Arena as a free model router/evaluation tool
Industries served
AI model evaluation, Generative media (image, video, audio, web design), AI research and development
Technology advantage
Crowdsourced human-preference data at scale (5.5M users, 190+ countries) that tracks taste variation across continents and over time; complements automated benchmarks which are vulnerable to gaming/manipulation; $60M ARR within 6 months of launch.
How they differentiate
Focuses on design/media evaluation (websites, images, audio, video) rather than text; monetizes human-preference data as infrastructure for frontier labs; tracks taste evolution across geographies and time; $60M ARR demonstrates strong product-market fit.
Main competitors
LM Arena (text-based AI evaluation, raised $150M Series A), Yupp (crowdsourced human feedback, shut down after raising $33M)
Key partnerships
Y Combinator (S25 batch), Index Ventures, Kalshi (Prediction Arena live trading)
Notable customers
Frontier AI labs (specific names undisclosed, closed first major deal with a frontier lab within a week of launch)
Major milestones
Founded 2025 (YC S25 batch), scaled from $5M to $60M ARR in 6 months, reached 5.5M users across 190+ countries, closed first frontier lab deal within a week of launch, raised $7.9M seed led by Index Ventures (Aug 2026).
Growth metrics
$60M ARR; 5.5M users across 190+ countries; team of 10
Market positioning
Leading crowdsourced human-preference evaluation platform for AI-generated design/media, generating $60M ARR with 5.5M users. Competes with LM Arena (text) and the now-defunct Yupp in the human-evaluation data market.
Geographic focus
Global (190+ countries); tracks regional taste preferences (e.g., Asian web dashboards tend toward maximalist design)
About Grace Li
Ex-Apple Software Engineer (Photos, Memory Creation, Apple Intelligence; demoed live to Craig Federighi); Harvard CS + Neuroscience; Harvard Medical School neurocognitive research; Harvard Varsity Sailing athlete.
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Official website: https://notes.designarena.ai/about/