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idler raises $9M in Seed funding led by Paradigm to expand its machine learning research and scale infrastructure.

PRIVATEAug 21, 2026•about 3 hours ago

Amount Raised

$9 Million

Round Type

Seed

San FranciscoSoftwareArtificial IntelligenceCyber SecurityMachine Learning

Investors

Smaiyl MakyshovNur BazylbekovFeross AboukhadijehLynett CapitalJanine LegerDan PoschCatheryn LiManish ChandraY CombinatorParadigm

Description

idler, a San Francisco-based frontier data research lab, raised $9M in seed funding. The round was led by Paradigm, with participation from Y Combinator and several angel investors. The company will use the capital to enhance its research team and accelerate the development of AI evaluation datasets. Additionally, idler launched ShelfLife, a benchmark for testing autonomous financial agents.

Company Information

Company

idler

Location

San Francisco, California, United States

About

idler is a frontier data research lab and artificial intelligence evaluation platform based in San Francisco, CA. The company develops a comprehensive evaluation and benchmarking platform that builds advanced evaluation suites, programmatic datasets, and interactive reinforcement learning environments utilized by global AI labs. It focuses on specialized software engineering, cybersecurity, recursive self-improvement, and enterprise safety testing beds.

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