LM Arena, a crowdsourced benchmarking platform that major AI labs depend on to test and promote their models, has raised $100 million in a seed funding round. According to Bloomberg, this investment values the organization at $600 million. The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and UC Investments, the investment arm of the University of California. Additional participants included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins. Founded in 2023, LM Arena has quickly become a focal point in the AI industry. Primarily managed by researchers affiliated with UC Berkeley, the platform has established partnerships with prominent tech companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. These collaborations enable the release of their flagship AI models for evaluation by the wider research community. Prior to this significant funding, LM Arena operated with support from a mix of grants and donations. Contributions came from sources like Google’s Kaggle data science platform, a16z, and Together AI. However, the platform has faced criticism recently, with some researchers accusing it of assisting top AI labs in manipulating its leaderboard rankings. LM Arena has strongly denied these allegations, emphasizing its commitment to fair and transparent benchmarking practices. Despite the controversy, the substantial investment underscores the platform's growing influence and importance in the AI landscape.