Mirendil, an AI startup founded by former Anthropic researchers Behnam Neyshabur and Harsh Mehta, has secured $200 million in a landmark seed funding round. The investment, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins with participation from NVIDIA, values the San Francisco-based company at $1 billion. Mirendil aims to revolutionize the industry by building AI systems designed to automate the process of AI research and development itself.
A Mission to Democratize AI Research
The company was established to address the widening gap between the capabilities of major AI labs and other research institutions. Neyshabur and Mehta, who departed Anthropic in late 2025, argue that the ability to conduct frontier research should be accessible to a broader community. Their goal is to empower organizations like universities and hospitals to build specialized AI without needing massive, in-house engineering teams.
Mirendil's core product is a platform that automates complex research and development tasks, including experimental design, model evaluation, and iterative training. By training specialized models on these functions, the system aims to compress research timelines from months into mere days. This would enable domain experts, such as scientists in drug discovery, to independently build and refine sophisticated AI models for their specific needs.
A Team Forged in Frontier AI Labs
The founding team possesses deep expertise from working at the forefront of AI development. Neyshabur and Mehta honed their skills at Google and Anthropic, focusing on large-scale model training and evaluation. They are joined by Shayan Salehian, an early member of xAI, and MIT graduate Tara Rezaei, leading a team of approximately 20 specialists from industry leaders like OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
Strategic Backing and Market Positioning
The substantial investment from Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins highlights strong investor confidence in Mirendil's mission. Both firms have a history of backing transformative AI companies, and their joint leadership in this seed round signals a shared belief in automating AI research as a pivotal next step. NVIDIA's involvement further validates the company's focus on creating foundational infrastructure for the next wave of AI innovation.
In a crowded field of AI startups, Mirendil distinguishes itself by focusing on the underlying research infrastructure rather than building another foundational model. While other ventures aim to achieve safe superintelligence or apply AI to specific verticals, Mirendil is creating the tools to power all of them. This unique positioning presents a challenging thesis but offers a substantial prize if the platform becomes integral to the broader ecosystem.
With its $200 million in capital, Mirendil is poised to challenge the current structure of the AI industry by democratizing access to high-level research tools. The company's success hinges on its ability to translate its ambitious vision of automated R&D into a robust and accessible platform. If achieved, Mirendil could significantly accelerate innovation by empowering a new generation of builders across countless scientific and enterprise domains.