Bespoke Labs
CommercialBespoke Labs is an applied AI research lab in Mountain View, founded in 2024 by Mahesh Sathiamoorthy (ex-Google DeepMind) and UC Berkeley professor Alex Dimakis. It builds RL environments and infrastructure for training and evaluating reliable agents, and is backed by $40M from Wing VC, 8VC, Mayfield and others. It combines commercial environment and post-training work, such as a jointly published project with Intuit Credit Karma, with a large open-research output: OpenThoughts, Curator, GEPA, Terminal-Bench, AutoResearchExam and ConjectureBench.
What's new
- 19 Sep 2026customer
SeeWhy: small specialized model post-trained with Intuit Credit Karma
Llama 3.1 8B fine-tuned with LoRA, plus GEPA prompt optimization, synthetic data and 'Dynamic Semantic Tags', to write credit-card explanations. Reports 100% card-name, 99.2% fee and 99.9% rate accuracy, and 15-20x lower serving cost from self-hosting. The technical report is co-authored by four Intuit Inc. and two Bespoke Labs authors.
Why it matters: First publicly named enterprise engagement, backed by a joint technical report with Intuit authors. Accuracy and cost figures are vendor- and partner-reported.
- 18 Sep 2026open-source
Bespoke Nimble / Bespoke-Nimble-9B released: local typed-decision model built with contrastive data curation
A LoRA adapter on Qwen3.5-9B that scores enum, boolean and rubric answers in a single pass. The README reports 90.12% on 324 held-out examples, against 66.36% for the base model and 93.21% for another system it compares to. Runs locally on Apple Silicon (MLX) or NVIDIA BF16 GPUs. Repo created 2026-09-18, latest checkpoint 2026-09-24, about 2.05k stars. The Hugging Face card says Apache-2.0; GitHub detects no license.
Why it matters: An open model and tool for cheap local classifiers and judges, relevant to labeling and verification pipelines. Results are vendor-reported.
- 10 Sep 2026benchmark
AutoResearchExam: benchmark for agents doing 24-hour open-ended ML research
29 ML research tasks scored by Area Under the AutoResearch Curve (AUARC, a time-weighted hidden-test score). Has a public leaderboard (results as of 2026-09-09) and an official harness (AutoResearchExam-Terminus, released 2026-09-15, Apache-2.0).
Why it matters: A new long-horizon research-agent benchmark with a public leaderboard.
- 3 Sep 2026research
Personalizing the Inkling open coding model for a code repository with SFT + RL (GRPO)
By Romir Patel, Alex Dimakis and Mahesh Sathiamoorthy. SFT on 146 teacher trajectories over 58 fontTools tasks, then GRPO with 14 rubrics on 92 more tasks. Held-out fontTools: base 0%, SFT 52%, SFT+RL 57%. The unseen SQLGlot repo went from 0% to 54%. Thinking Machines Lab is thanked for a credit contribution.
Why it matters: A public recipe for repo-specific coding environments plus RL post-training, which is close to the service Bespoke sells. The Thinking Machines tie is a compute-credit acknowledgement, not a customer relationship. Results are vendor-reported.
- Aug 2026partnership
data-eng-bench (Snowflake Labs) reported as co-developed with Bespoke Labs
Teradata's 2026-09-22 press release describes data-eng-bench as 'a benchmark developed by Snowflake Labs and Bespoke Labs for data pipeline engineering'. The repo (github.com/Snowflake-Labs/data-eng-bench, created 2026-07-29, Apache-2.0) has 103 dbt/DuckDB/Snowflake tasks. Its NOTICE file credits Snowflake as author of the tasks and does not mention Bespoke Labs. Bespoke's exact role is unconfirmed by Bespoke or Snowflake.
Why it matters: A possible enterprise data-platform partnership (Snowflake) on agent benchmarks, now used by third parties such as Teradata. Treat as reported until Bespoke or Snowflake confirms it.
- Aug 2026other
CEO Mahesh Sathiamoorthy talk 'RL Environments are all you need' at TestMu 2026
Talk listed on the CEO's personal site. Other 2026 talks listed there: AI Engineer 2026 (June), a BlackRock SF Applied AI Forum panel (May) and a Snowflake panel (April).
Why it matters: States the company's thesis that environments are the scarce ingredient for agents. Self-listed.
- 31 Jul 2026benchmark
ConjectureBench: 14,865 open math problems linked to their sources
An open collection of unsolved math problems (github.com/bespokelabsai/conjecture-bench, Apache-2.0). Claimed results are submitted as GitHub issues; source-backed corrections go in as pull requests. The company calls it a two-day sprint experiment.
Why it matters: A new open target set for AI-for-math and research-agent evaluation.
- 6 Jul 2026funding
Bespoke Labs announces $40M (Wing VC-led Series A plus an 8VC-led $8.25M seed) to build environments for reliable agents
Company post: the Series A was led by Wing VC with Mayfield, The House Fund, Tristan Handy and angels from Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta. The $8.25M seed was led by 8VC with Jeff Dean, Spiros Xanthos and Dheeraj Pandey. SiliconANGLE puts the Series A at $31.75M and says the money goes to the RL platform (automated environment generation with human expert input, a sandboxing layer) and to data research. Covered by Axios, The Next Web, SiliconANGLE and a Business Wire release; TNW gives headcount as about 40.
Why it matters: First public investor list and the largest raise to date. It funds the shift to company-scale simulated environments for agent post-training.
Founding team
What practitioners should know
For researchers
- Recent open releases: AutoResearchExam (29 tasks, AUARC metric, Apache-2.0 Terminus harness), ConjectureBench (14,865 open math problems), Bespoke-Nimble-9B (contrastive data curation) and a joint Intuit/Bespoke technical report on Dynamic Semantic Tags.
- Published RL post-training recipe: per-repo SFT + GRPO on the Inkling open coding model. fontTools held-out tasks went from 0% to 57% and the unseen SQLGlot repo from 0% to 54% (vendor-reported).
- ICLR 2026 papers: OpenThoughts, Terminal-Bench (85-author multi-institution paper; Dimakis co-author) and GEPA (oral; Dimakis co-author).
For program managers
- $40M announced 2026-07-06: Series A led by Wing VC (SiliconANGLE reports $31.75M) plus an $8.25M seed led by 8VC. Other backers: Mayfield, The House Fund, Jeff Dean, Tristan Handy, and unnamed angels from Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta. Headcount is about 40 per TNW.
- Named enterprise engagement: Intuit Credit Karma (SeeWhy, 2026-09-19), backed by a technical report with Intuit co-authors. Frontier-lab customers remain unnamed; 'trusted by Fortune 500 enterprises and frontier labs' is self-claimed.
- Possible Snowflake tie: Teradata's press release says Snowflake Labs and Bespoke Labs developed data-eng-bench. Not confirmed by either company.
- Research-led team: CEO is ex-Google DeepMind; Chief Science Officer is a UC Berkeley professor. Advisors listed on the vendor site: Joseph Gonzalez (UC Berkeley), Greg Durrett (NYU), Tasso Argyros (Databricks).
For data ops
- Tooling is built around the Terminal-Bench/Harbor ecosystem: the GitHub org hosts a Harbor fork (created 2026-09), a SkyRL fork and AutoResearchExam-Terminus.
- A bespokelabs-python SDK repo (Apache-2.0) exists. It dates from 2024 and was last updated 2026-09-30. No public API docs found.
- Bespoke-Nimble-9B runs locally (Apple Silicon or NVIDIA BF16) as a typed judge or classifier, which may suit labeling QA. Its accuracy figures are vendor-reported.
- No SOC 2, other certifications or trust/security page found on bespokelabs.ai (checked 2026-10-05).
Benchmarks & research
Products
Scale & velocity
Research depth
Capital
| Date | Round | Amount | Led by | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Jul 2026 | Series A | $40M | Wing VC (Series A), 8VC (Seed) | source ↗ |
| Series A, announced together with the earlier seed ($40M combined) · $40M combined: $8.25M seed (company-stated) + Series A (SiliconANGLE reports $31.75M; the company post does not state the Series A amount) | ||||
Security & compliance
Product
Buyer analysis
How we verified this
Related vendors
Sources
- bespokelabs.ai/blog/bespoke-labs-raises-40m-to-build-environments-that-e · 2026-10-05, Official $40M announcement (dated Jul 6, 2026): leads, investors, $8.25M seed; no Series A amount stated
- siliconangle.com/2026/07/06/ai-post-training-startup-bespoke-labs-raises · 2026-10-05, Press: $31.75M Series A / $8.25M seed split, platform description
- thenextweb.com/news/bespoke-labs-40m-ai-agent-training-environments · 2026-10-05, Press: headcount about 40, investors, thesis
- www.bespokelabs.ai/blog · 2026-10-05, Blog index with post dates (Jul 6 to Sep 19, 2026)
- www.bespokelabs.ai/blog/conjecturebench-15k-open-math-problems-for-you-t · 2026-10-05, ConjectureBench release, 14,865 problems
- www.bespokelabs.ai/blog/personalizing-inkling-for-your-code-repository-w · 2026-10-05, Inkling SFT+RL study; authors; Thinking Machines Lab credit acknowledgement
- www.bespokelabs.ai/blog/introducing-autoresearchexam · 2026-10-05, AutoResearchExam announcement; harness released 2026-09-15
- benchmarks.bespokelabs.ai/autoresearchexam/ · 2026-10-05, Leaderboard: 29 tasks, AUARC, results as of 2026-09-09
- www.bespokelabs.ai/blog/post-training-seewhy-with-intuit-credit-karma · 2026-10-05, Intuit Credit Karma SeeWhy engagement
- files.bespokelabs.ai/ck-bespoke-tr.pdf · 2026-10-05, Dynamic Semantic Tags technical report; authors from Intuit Inc. and Bespoke Labs
- github.com/bespokelabsai · 2026-10-05, Org repos and creation dates (via GitHub API): nimble 2026-09-18, harbor fork 2026-09-11, AutoResearchExam(-Terminus) 2026-09, conjecture-bench 2026-07-31, bespokelabs-python 2024-09-04
- github.com/bespokelabsai/nimble · 2026-10-05, Nimble README: base model, 90.12% vs 66.36% on 324 held-out examples, hardware
- huggingface.co/bespokelabs/Bespoke-Nimble-9B · 2026-10-05, Model card: Qwen3.5-9B LoRA, Apache-2.0
- www.teradata.com/press-releases/2026/tera-an-agentic-coworker · 2026-10-05, Teradata release (2026-09-22) describing data-eng-bench as developed by Snowflake Labs and Bespoke Labs
- github.com/Snowflake-Labs/data-eng-bench · 2026-10-05, data-eng-bench repo (created 2026-07-29; 103 tasks; NOTICE credits Snowflake as task author)
- www.bespokelabs.ai/ · 2026-10-05, Homepage: offerings, ICLR 2026 papers, self-claimed customer statements, no SOC 2 mention
- bespokelabs.ai/about · 2026-10-05, Leadership, advisors, Mountain View address
- smahesh.com/ · 2026-10-05, CEO bio, headshot, 2026 talks (TestMu, August 2026)
- people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~alexdimakis/ · 2026-10-05, Dimakis bio, headshot, Bespoke co-founder role
- arxiv.org/abs/2601.11868 · 2026-10-05, Terminal-Bench paper; 85 authors, including Alex Dimakis
- arxiv.org/abs/2507.19457 · 2026-10-05, GEPA paper, Dimakis co-author, ICLR 2026 oral
- www.bespokelabs.ai/about-us · 2026-06-07, Team/founders, backgrounds, advisors, HQ Mountain View, applied AI research lab mission
- www.linkedin.com/company/bespokelabsai · 2026-06-07, Public snippet, ~48 employees, HQ Mountain View, June hiring growth, specialties
- tracxn.com/d/companies/bespokelabs/__TgeW4_XxZv-sKUrOh6M6QeTLr6e9xHzW26B · 2026-06-07, Founded 2024, 40 employees as of 2026-04-30, $7.25M raised, Series A label
- www.formds.com/issuers/bespokelabs-ai-inc · 2026-06-07, SEC Form D filed 2024-06-04, $7,249,998 raised, directors/execs listed (Dimakis, Sathiamoorthy, Bhaskar Ghosh, Priyank Patel)
- luma.com/36sbgxgo · 2026-06-07, Event listing labels round '$7.25M Seed'; CEO ex-Google DeepMind
- jobs.ashbyhq.com/bespokelabs · 2026-06-07, Careers, open roles incl. RL Environments, Research Engineer, Data Operations Manager, DevOps, recruiter; some remote-US
- newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/rl-environments-and-rl-for-science · 2026-06-07, Industry context placing Bespoke Labs among RL environment / data foundry vendors