AI post-training startup Bespoke Labs raises $40M in funding
Bespoke Labs Inc., a startup working to streamline the post-training phase of artificial intelligence projects, has raised $40 million in funding.
The company stated today that the capital arrived in two tranches. Bespoke Labs raised the bulk of the funds, $31.75 million, through a Series A round led by Wing VC. The firm was joined by Mayfield, The House Fund and employees at major tech firms such as Anthropic PBC. Bespoke Labs earlier raised $8.25 million from a consortium that included Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean.
The workflow through which developers build a custom AI model comprises two main steps. The first is the pre-training phase, which equips the neural network with the core skills and knowledge it requires to answer prompts. The second phase, post-training, hones the model’s reasoning skills. It can also provide improvements in other areas such as long-horizon task completion.
Developers often carry out post-training using a method called reinforcement learning. The basic idea is to provide an AI with sample tasks similar to the work it will carry out in production. When the model completes a sample task correctly, it receives a “reward.” The reward is a piece of data that adjusts the algorithm’s configuration to boost its output quality.
