Mirendil, a San Francisco-based AI startup founded by two former Anthropic researchers, has raised $200 million in seed funding at a $1 billion valuation.
The founders left Anthropic in December 2025 to build AI systems that automate AI research itself, aiming to bring frontier R&D within reach of universities and research institutions beyond the largest labs.
Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins led the round, with NVIDIA among the participating investors.
Behnam Neyshabur and Harsh Mehta left Anthropic in December 2025, months after joining the company in late 2024, and have now raised $200 million at a $1 billion valuation for their new startup, Mirendil. The raise is one of the largest seed rounds in AI history.
The San Francisco-based company wants to build AI that can do what AI researchers do: design experiments, iterate on engineering problems, and improve AI systems over time with progressively less human input.
