The leaderboard “you can’t game,” funded by the companies it ranks
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Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR cycles. In just seven months, the startup went from a UC Berkeley PhD research project to being valued at $1.7 billion.
Watch as Equity host Rebecca Bellan catches up with Arena co-founders Anastasios Angelopoulos and Wei-Lin Chiang about how their platform became the go-to leaderboard for frontier AI models, and how they’re trying to build a neutral benchmark even as companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic back the project.
They break down how Arena works and why it’s harder to game than static benchmarks, what “structural neutrality” actually means, why Claude is currently topping expert leaderboards in legal and medical use cases, and how the company is expanding beyond chat to benchmark agents, coding, and real-world tasks with a new enterprise product.
Theresa Loconsolo
Audio Producer
Theresa Loconsolo is an audio producer at TechCrunch focusing on Equity, the network’s flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch in 2022, she was one of 2 producers at a four-station conglomerate where she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered live performances and interviews from guests like lovelytheband. Theresa is based in New Jersey and holds a bachelors degree in Communication from Monmouth University.
You can contact or verify outreach from Theresa by emailing theresa.loconsolo@techcrunch.com.
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