Vals AI S Verified

RL environment company

On X: @ValsAI ↗
Funding: $40M raised · rounds and investors
Tier: S why
Snapshot: November 5, 2026

What Vals AI does

Vals AI is an independent evaluator that benchmarks AI models and applications on professional tasks and frontier risks, publishing leaderboards such as the Vals Index.

Sells: RL environments
Leads with: Several domains (a generalist)
Based in: San Francisco, USA
Team: 11-50
Website: vals.ai ↗

What Vals AI sells

Read from Vals AI's own website, checked October 12, 2026: the line that puts it in each category.

RL environments

Evals
“We run all of our own evaluations and create many of our benchmarks in-house.”
vals.ai ↗

Domains Vals AI covers

Finance
“We benchmark the world's leading AI models on economically valuable tasks such as finance, software, and frontier risk like cybersecurity”
vals.ai ↗
Security
“frontier risk like cybersecurity, recursive self improvement and mental health”
vals.ai ↗
Health and bio
“a benchmark that tests how AI chatbots respond when a teen turns to them for mental-health support”
vals.ai ↗

Vals AI competitors and alternatives

The companies that sell the most of the same things in the same domains, and what they share with Vals AI.

ReasonCore Also sells evals · also in health and bio, finance and security
AfterQuery Also sells evals · also in finance and health and bio
Align AI Also sells evals · also in health and bio and finance
Collinear Also sells evals · also in security and finance
Mercor Also sells evals · also in finance and health and bio

Every RL environment company on the landscape map →

Tier S

Category leader: 200+ people, $100M+ raised or a $1B+ valuation.

How much stands behind a tier: usage, who backs it, a confirmed line from its own site or paper, and a clear read on X. High with three of the four, medium with two, low otherwise.

team 11-50
raised $40M
valued $400M
investors: Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Pear VC
in curated RL directories (2 pts)

On X · well regarded, moderate buzz, from 13 posts about Vals AI in the last month

Vals AI's independent runs (Terminal-Bench 4, Finance Agent, SAGE) are cited as reference points against lab self-reports, with minor debate over whether Terminal-Bench measures harness quality.

@christianyun ↗ · @AdamHoltererer ↗ · @sethkarten ↗

How we got to tier S

Adoption: team 11-50; raised $40M; valued $400M; investors: Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Pear VC. Tier A.
On X: well regarded, moderate buzz. “Vals AI's independent runs (Terminal-Bench 4, Finance Agent, SAGE) are cited as reference points against lab self-reports, with minor debate over whether Terminal-Bench measures harness quality.” Moved up to S.
In curated RL directories: 2 points, a floor of none.
Confirmed: a line from its own site or paper places it.

A clear view on X moves a tier one step up or down; most entries don't move. How tiers work.

Vals AI funding

Raised: $40Msum of the rounds below
Latest round: Series A $40M2026-08 · led by a16z
Valuation: $400M2026-08

Backed bya16z8VCBloomberg BetaHRT VenturesNext Ladder VenturesPear VC

Rounds

Series A · $40M at a $400M valuation · 2026-08 · led by a16z
Today we’re announcing our $40M Series A at a $400M valuation, led by a16z, with participation from existing investors 8VC, Pear VC, and BloombergBeta and new investors HRT Ventures and Next Ladder Ventures.
1. Read: “Today we’re announcing our $40M Series A at a $400M valuation, led by a16z, with participation from existing investors 8VC, Pear VC, and BloombergBeta and new investors HRT Ventures and Next Ladder Ventures.”
2. Found word for word on its own site: vals.ai/blogs/series-a
3. The quote states the amount and who led it
4. Also named by 2 other pages read
vals.ai/blogs/series-a

Funds 5

a16z led a round
Named in the round quoted above.
8VC
Named in the round quoted above.
Bloomberg Beta
Named in the round quoted above.
Next Ladder Ventures
Named in the round quoted above.
Pear VC
Named in the round quoted above.

Corporate investors 1

HRT Ventures
Named in the round quoted above.

Every figure is quoted from its own site, its accelerator or a funding announcement; a round's amount and lead appear only when its quote states them. Startup databases are never used as evidence. Checked 2026-10-11. How funding is checked.

Where Vals AI sits

Its domain on the map, live. Hover a logo for its name; click to open it. Open it on the full map

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Latest from Vals AI on X

@ValsAI ↗

Tencent's Hy4 debuts at #4 among open-weight models on the Vals Index, behind Kimi K3.1 Pro, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, and GLM-5.3. It nearly matches GLM-5.3's performance at about a fifth of the cost per task. It's also a substantial improvement over Hy4 Preview, at about the same cost.
— ValsAI (@ValsAI) Nov 4, 2026
AI models can explain U.S. immigration law, but what happens when the law changes? On Immigration Bench, frontier models met just 7.3% of expert criteria on 2025–2026 immigration rules compared to 64.0% on established law. Recent policy changes are a major blind spot, even for the strongest models.
— ValsAI (@ValsAI) Nov 4, 2026
How Much Does Reasoning Effort Affect Score and Cost? We tested seven frontier models at three reasoning levels across the Vals Index. Four retained at least 80% of their performance at their lowest setting, for half the cost or less. Full blog post link in the comments!
— ValsAI (@ValsAI) Nov 3, 2026

Next: browse all environments. Entry from the RL Research daily scrape of public sources, 2026-11-05 snapshot.