Intelligence (Design Arena)
Summary active Updated Aug 6, 2026This profile is AI-generated. If you spot an error, please help us fix it by sharing a URL to the correct information.
Investors
Founders
About
Intelligence is a San Francisco-based startup operating Design Arena, a crowdsourced benchmarking platform for AI-generated visual media 123. Co-founded in 2025 by Grace Li and a group of college friends before their graduation, the company runs “A vs. B” head-to-head comparisons in which humans pick between two AI-generated outputs (websites, images, and other visual media), then packages those votes as training feedback for frontier AI labs 12. As of the seed round, Design Arena had 5.3 million users globally and $60M in annualized revenue 123.
Disclaimer: This is a lean profile built from initial round coverage and may be expanded as more information becomes available.
Funding History
| Date | Round | Amount | Lead | Co-investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-03 | Seed | $7.9M | Index Ventures | Conviction (Sarah Guo, Mike Vernal), A*, Valkyrie 123 |
Proceeds will fund core ML evaluation infrastructure, expansion of the crowdsourced reviewer community, and data engineering pipelines for multi-modal design validation 23.
What Investors Say
No independently sourced investor quotes found at time of profile creation.
What Founders Say
“It was the missing bottleneck for a lot of these models to make improvements in the design space. About a week later, we closed our first major deal with a frontier lab, and the rest is kind of history.” — Grace Li, Co-Founder & CEO, describing the origin of Design Arena and Intelligence’s first frontier-lab deal, on the seed round announcement 1.
Sources
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TechCrunch, “Design Arena creators raise $7.9 million to bring taste to AI models,” August 3, 2026, accessed August 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/03/designarena-creators-raise-7-9-million-to-bring-taste-to-ai-models/↩↩↩↩↩
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FinSMEs, “Intelligence Raises $7.9M in Seed Funding,” August 2026, accessed August 2026. https://www.finsmes.com/2026/08/intelligence-raises-7-9m-in-seed-funding.html↩↩↩↩↩
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AI Weekly, “Design Arena maker Intelligence raises $7.9M seed at $60M ARR,” August 2026, accessed August 2026. https://aiweekly.co/alerts/design-arena-maker-intelligence-raises-79m-seed-at-60m-arr↩↩↩↩