DesignArena, an AI evaluation platform built by startup Intelligence, has raised $7.9 million in a seed round led by Index Ventures, with participation from Conviction, A*, Valkyrie and others. The tool, which now has 5.3 million users, lets AI labs collect scalable human feedback on design outputs such as websites and images, addressing a gap that automated benchmarks cannot fill since those can be manipulated or gamed. The funding underscores growing investor interest in human-led evaluation services as a check on AI model quality, particularly for subjective areas like visual design where machine benchmarks fall short.

Founded by Grace Li and college friends in 2025, the company began as an AI game engine before pivoting to feedback collection after realising human judgement was essential to assessing quality. Users are presented with "A vs B" style comparisons to rank AI-generated outputs, with enterprise clients, including frontier AI labs, paying for the resulting data; the site reportedly already generates $60 million in annual recurring revenue. The sector carries risk, as shown by rival Yupp, which shut down this year despite raising $33 million and attracting 1.3 million users, though other players such as LM Arena have thrived, raising $150 million in a Series A in January.