Arena, the AI leaderboard everyone uses, is now a $100M business

Arena：人人都用的 AI 排行榜，现已成为价值 1 亿美元的业务

Just eight months after launching its commercial service, AI leaderboard provider Arena, which originated as a research project at UC Berkeley in 2023, has reached $100 million in annualized run-rate revenue. 在推出商业服务仅八个月后，AI 排行榜提供商 Arena（起源于 2023 年加州大学伯克利分校的一个研究项目）的年化运行收入已达到 1 亿美元。

Arena is best known for its popular crowdsourced AI model performance leaderboard, generated from over 10 million user evaluations. Its consumer website lets a user type a prompt it sends to two models; afterward, the user chooses which model did a better job. Arena 最出名的是其广受欢迎的众包 AI 模型性能排行榜，该榜单基于超过 1000 万次用户评估生成。其消费者网站允许用户输入提示词，系统将其发送给两个模型；随后，用户选择哪个模型的表现更好。

While Arena’s popular AI model leaderboard is free for public use, the company began generating revenue from its platform in September when it introduced AI Evaluations, a service that provides model labs and enterprises with deep-dive performance analytics gathered from its community. 虽然 Arena 的 AI 模型排行榜对公众免费开放，但该公司在 9 月份推出了“AI 评估”（AI Evaluations）服务，开始从平台创收。该服务为模型实验室和企业提供从其社区收集的深度性能分析。

Arena’s rapid revenue growth shows that its commercial offerings are as popular with customers as they are with its community of evaluators, who are frequently drawn to the platform for early access to the latest, often unreleased, AI models. Arena 收入的快速增长表明，其商业产品在客户中与在评估者社区中一样受欢迎，评估者们经常被该平台吸引，以抢先体验最新的、通常尚未发布的 AI 模型。

“A lot of people don’t even understand that our business is making any money at all; people still see us as an open source project,” Anastasios Angelopoulos, Arena’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “很多人甚至不知道我们的业务在赚钱；人们仍然把我们视为一个开源项目，”Arena 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Anastasios Angelopoulos 告诉 TechCrunch。

While Arena calls its revenue milestone ARR, a term that traditionally stood for annualized recurring revenue, Angelopoulos clarified that the company charges customers for “consumption,” which means that its revenue is not recurring. 虽然 Arena 将其收入里程碑称为 ARR（通常指年度经常性收入），但 Angelopoulos 澄清说，公司是按“消费量”向客户收费的，这意味着其收入并非经常性的。

While Arena doesn’t have direct competitors — Yupp, another crowdsourced AI model-picking startup, shut down in March— Angelopoulos said the company competes “for the same dollar” with human labeling startups like Mercor, Surge, and Scale AI, all of which assist model makers in refining their AI during post-training. 虽然 Arena 没有直接竞争对手——另一家众包 AI 模型筛选初创公司 Yupp 已于 3 月倒闭——但 Angelopoulos 表示，该公司与 Mercor、Surge 和 Scale AI 等人工标注初创公司“争夺同一笔预算”，这些公司都在协助模型制造商在训练后阶段优化其 AI。

As AI providers strive to maximize model performance, their appetite for post-training optimization services continues to surge. When Arena announced in January that it raised a $150 million Series A at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion, its annualized revenue was $30 million. 随着 AI 提供商努力最大化模型性能，他们对训练后优化服务的需求持续激增。当 Arena 在 1 月份宣布以 17 亿美元的投后估值完成 1.5 亿美元的 A 轮融资时，其年化收入为 3000 万美元。

Elsewhere, Handshake’s gross annualized revenue from AI training has nearly doubled since January, climbing from $550 million to nearly $1 billion, The Information reported in April. Mercor’s annualized revenue also topped $1 billion earlier this year, up from $500 million last September, according to The Information. 据《The Information》4 月报道，Handshake 从 AI 训练中获得的年化总收入自 1 月以来几乎翻了一番，从 5.5 亿美元攀升至近 10 亿美元。据《The Information》报道，Mercor 的年化收入也在今年早些时候突破了 10 亿美元，高于去年 9 月的 5 亿美元。

Arena ranks models on a variety of tasks such as text, coding, vision, and image generation, as well as complex, long-running workflows through its recently introduced Agent Mode. Arena 通过其最近推出的“智能体模式”（Agent Mode），对文本、编码、视觉和图像生成等多种任务以及复杂的长期运行工作流进行模型排名。

Along with Angelopoulos (pictured left), Arena was co-founded by fellow UC Berkeley postdoctoral student Wei-Lin Chiang (pictured center), who serves as the startup’s CTO. The startup was also co-founded by Ion Stoica (pictured right), the renowned UC Berkeley professor and Databricks co-founder who advised the project before it incorporated as a company in April 2025. 除了 Angelopoulos（左图）外，Arena 还由加州大学伯克利分校的博士后研究员 Wei-Lin Chiang（中图）共同创立，他担任该初创公司的首席技术官。该初创公司还由 Ion Stoica（右图）共同创立，他是著名的加州大学伯克利分校教授和 Databricks 的联合创始人，在 2025 年 4 月公司成立之前，他一直担任该项目的顾问。

Arena has raised a total of $250 million from investors, including Felicis, Andreessen Horowitz, The House Fund, LDVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Laude Ventures, and UC Investments. Arena 已从投资者那里筹集了总计 2.5 亿美元的资金，投资者包括 Felicis、Andreessen Horowitz、The House Fund、LDVP、Kleiner Perkins、Lightspeed Venture Partners、Laude Ventures 和 UC Investments。