Today’s Top Talent Pools

Arena, the AI evaluation platform that began in 2023 as a UC Berkeley project crowdsourcing model rankings, raised $200M in Series B funding at a $3.1B valuation on 8 October, co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with Salesforce Ventures, 01 Advisors, Dell Technologies Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, a16z and Felicis. The valuation is up from $1.7B at its $150M Series A in January, a 1.8x step-up in nine months.

  1. vincent w in Menlo Park (Stealth)

    1. Role: Researcher @ Arena (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Researcher @ Anthropic, Researcher @ Apple, Researcher @ Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research

    3. Description: Stealth since 9/25

  2. Thijs Simonian in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Member of Technical Staff @ Arena (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Member of Technical Staff @ OpenAI, Co-Director @ TreeHacks, AI Infrastructure Intern @ Andreessen Horowitz

    3. Description: "cs @ stanford , prev. robotics @ openai"

  3. Harvin Park in SF Bay Area (Founder @ Sonder)

    1. Role: Research @ Arena (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Research Intern @ Google DeepMind

    3. Description: "interfaces for human intimacy”

  4. Evan Frick in SF Bay Area (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Member of Technical Staff @ Arena (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Graduate Researcher @ Berkeley RISE Lab

    3. Description: Left Arena on 9/26

Nous Research, the open-source AI lab behind the Hermes models and the Psyche decentralized training network, raised $90M in Series B funding at a $1.5B valuation, led by Robot Ventures with NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung, Y Combinator, Union Square Ventures and Menlo Ventures. That takes total funding to roughly $160M, after a $50M Series A led by Paradigm at a $1B valuation in April 2025.

  1. Cyrus Nouroozi in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: AI Researcher @ Nous Research (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founder @ The Synthesis Company (YC S24), Co-Founder @ WOMBO.ai ($9M led by Round13, Nvidia-backed), Founding CTO @ Conversify

    3. Description: Left Synthesis Company on 8/26 and "building something new”

  2. Luigi Daniele in Tampa (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: (Founding Team) AI Researcher @ Nous Research (<1 yr)

    2. Description: Independent Researcher and Consultant since 1/24

  3. Joe Li in Cupertino (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: ML Research @ Nous Research (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: ML Research Intern @ Cognition, Researcher @ Princeton Power Electronics Lab

    3. Description: Stanford class of ‘28

  4. Rishav Kundu in Connecticut (Founder @ Launchboard)

    1. Role: Software Engineer @ Nous Research (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Executive Director @ Nerval ML

    3. Description: "Your system of record for private company ownership”

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