Yupp.ai shut down after raising $33 million from a16z crypto owner Chris Dixon

Sometimes a seemingly good idea, a big raise from a big-name venture capitalist, or a sea of ​​well-connected angel investors just isn’t enough.

Less than a year after its launch, Yupp.ai has decided to shut down its business, co-founders Pankaj Gupta and Gilad Mishnah announced on Tuesday.

Yupp offered an outsourced AI model selection service. It allowed consumers to test and compare results from 800 AI models for free, including the latest models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Yupp will return multiple responses from the instant request, including information or photos, and users will provide feedback on which models fit them best and why.

The idea was to generate anonymized data about what people actually need from AI, which model makers would pay for. Yupp said it has registered 1.3 million users and collected millions of preferences each month. It even had a leaderboard. The company said it also has a few AI labs as clients.

But unfortunately, it “hasn’t reached a strong enough level of product in the market” to survive, partly because AI models have improved by such huge leaps over the past few months, the founders said.

While labs pay big money for feedback, the current model — pioneered by companies like Scale AI and Mercor — is to hire subject matter experts, such as Ph.D.s, and put them in the reinforcement learning loop.

Moreover, Silicon Valley is already looking 10 miles away, when AI is created for and used by other AI systems. Model makers may want some consumer feedback now, but they are largely preparing for the day when agents, not humans, rule the online world.

“The landscape of AI model capabilities has changed dramatically in the past year alone and will continue to change rapidly,” Gupta, Yupp.ai’s CEO, wrote in a post on X about the closure plans. “The future is not just models, but effective systems.”

Yupp.ai raised a $33 million seed round in 2024 led by a16z crypto’s Chris Dixon, a giant seed round in its day. In addition, Yupp.ai has collected checks from more than 45 angel and small investors. This included prominent figures such as Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean; Twitter co-founder Biz Stone; Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp; and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

Some of Yopp’s employees join a “well-known” AI company, while others are looking for their next job, Gupta said. Yupp.ai did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.