#23

Taste Labs

Commercial

high confidence

tastelabs.com ↗ · Status: active confirmed · Founded 2025

Taste Labs (Taste) is a San Francisco startup, founded in October 2025 by former Exa growth lead Thais Castello Branco, that calls itself 'the taste layer for AI' and a hybrid research lab and infrastructure company. For model labs, it builds post-training data and RL environments for subjective domains, starting with design. Amplify describes these as preference datasets, reasoning data, rubrics and evaluation environments. The data is made by its TasteMakers network of expert creatives. Taste says it works with 'the top frontier labs' but names none. In September 2026 it launched a self-serve Brand API and MCP server that lets agents extract, search and verify brand design systems. It raised an $18.5M seed co-led by CRV and Amplify Partners, announced 2026-06-16.

Key facts

Headquarters

San Francisco, CA, USAconfirmed cite

Headcount band

11-50reported cite

Total raised

$18.5Mconfirmed cite

Last round

Seed, $18.5M, 2026-06-16, co-led by CRV and Amplify Partnersconfirmed cite

SOC 2

unknown cite

What they sell

human data + environmentsconfirmed cite

Open source

noestimated cite

Deployment

Custom data/environment engagements with frontier labs; self-serve SaaS API + MCP server (Brand API) for agent/app buildersconfirmed cite

What's new

6 sourced updates · last 6 months

5 Oct 2026customer Case study: General Intelligence Company of New York uses Taste's Brand API for brand import in Cofounder
Taste published this case study. Cofounder uses the Extract and Search endpoints so users can paste a URL and import their whole design system. It quotes Andrew, whom Taste's launch post names as the customer's CEO.
Why it matters: This is the first named customer, published by the vendor itself. It is an application company, not a frontier lab.
16 Sep 2026research Founder Thais Castello Branco presents 'Training Taste' at AI Engineer
The talk was posted on the AI Engineer YouTube channel as 'Training Taste, Thais Castello Branco, Taste Labs'. Taste's blog lists it as 'Ending Slop at AI Engineer Conference'. It covers Taste's analysis of more than two million websites, which suggests the web was becoming homogeneous before AI generation.
Why it matters: It is a public research signal from the founder.
15 Sep 2026product Taste launches the Brand API (Extract, Search, Verify) with an MCP server
The API lets agents extract a brand system from a URL, search a curated brand index by style, and check brand adherence. It is available as a REST API and through an MCP server at mcp.tastelabs.com/mcp. The launch post repeats that Taste has 'been working with the top frontier labs' but names none.
Why it matters: This is Taste's first self-serve product. It is aimed at agent and app builders, not only labs.
16 Aug 2026research Taste launches Prototype research fellowship and publishes Requests for Research
Fellows get access to human data, compute, collaborators and a competitive stipend. They can work remotely or in San Francisco and may publish their work. The companion Requests for Research covers aesthetic judgment, high-fidelity web environments, rubrics and evals for creative work, procedural fingerprinting of agents, and reward hacking Taste says it saw in brand-adaptation agents.
Why it matters: It shows Taste intends to do research on evals and environments for subjective domains.
16 Jun 2026funding Taste emerges with $18.5M seed co-led by CRV and Amplify Partners
Amplify (Sarah Catanzaro) announced its co-led investment. The post says Taste sells preference datasets, reasoning data, rubrics and evaluation environments to frontier AI labs, plus software to generative-AI application companies. Amplify's post does not name the other co-lead. Taste's site names CRV as co-lead of the $18.5M seed in its 'Mission as a moat' video.
Why it matters: This is a new vendor of post-training data and environments built for subjective, aesthetic domains, starting with design.
16 Jun 2026other Taste publishes 'A manifesto for judgement' and 'Stop debating taste'
These launch-day posts set out the company's thesis. The manifesto says: 'We're affecting this via post-training data and RL environments.' It says the team evaluates foundation models, finds where they break, and works with research teams on 'which data shape, quantity and distribution should be created'. The data is made by expert 'TasteMakers'.
Why it matters: These are Taste's own statements of how it works with model labs.

Founding team

Thais Castello Branco

Founder & CEO

Previously led growth at Exa, the AI search company, where she was known for its billboard campaigns (per Amplify).

What practitioners should know

For researchers

Taste describes itself as 'making the unverifiable verifiable, starting with design' (homepage) and says it works through 'post-training data and RL environments' (manifesto, 2026-06-16).
Its Requests for Research (2026-08-16) lists open problems: high-fidelity web environments (it uses Playwright for capture), rubrics and evals for creative work, procedural fingerprinting of agents, inferring user intent from edit sequences, and reward hacking it says it saw in agents that rebuild website sub-pages to match a brand.
The Requests for Research links arXiv 2606.16988, 'Agent trajectories as programs: fingerprinting and programming coding-agent behavior' (Hamidah Oderinwale, 2026-06-15), as work Taste 'explored'. The arXiv listing does not name Taste as an affiliation. Apart from that, Taste has published no papers, datasets, benchmarks or open-source repos as of 2026-10-05.

For program managers

Taste is seed stage. It raised an $18.5M seed co-led by CRV and Amplify Partners, announced 2026-06-16. CRV lists it as founded October 2025 and partnered April 2026.
Taste says it works 'with the top frontier labs' but names no lab, so frontier-lab work is a self-claim.
Amplify says Taste sells preference datasets, reasoning data, rubrics and evaluation environments to frontier labs. Amplify names Runway, Figma, Character AI and Adobe only as context or companies it has spoken to, not as customers.
The team is small. The careers page pictures 12 people, and LinkedIn self-reports 11-50 employees. There are 9 open roles in San Francisco, including 'AI Engineer, RL' and 'Design Research Engineer'.
The only named customer is General Intelligence Company of New York (Cofounder), a Brand API user, in a case study Taste published itself.

For data ops

Brand API Extract and Verify jobs run asynchronously: you poll the submission while it runs and sections come back as they finish. Search is synchronous. Results are cached per URL, and force: true forces a fresh run.
The MCP server at https://mcp.tastelabs.com/mcp accepts OAuth sign-in or an API key as a bearer token. Taste documents it for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex.
Published Brand API prices are Starter $99/mo, Pro $749/mo and custom Enterprise with SLA and Slack support. These cover the API only; lab data engagements have no published pricing.
Data for labs comes from the TasteMakers network, where creatives apply, take a short test and are placed on paid projects.
Taste publishes no security page, SOC 2 or other certification.

Products

Taste for Training Models (post-training data and RL environments for frontier labs) ↗

Taste's own name for its lab offering. It says it works 'with the top frontier labs to give their models taste, vision and design capabilities'. Amplify describes the offering as preference datasets, reasoning data, rubrics and evaluation environments. The manifesto says it delivers this through 'post-training data and RL environments'.launched Jun 2026

Brand API (Extract, Search, Verify) + MCP server ↗

Part of 'Taste for Agents or Apps'. It has three parts: brand-system extraction from a URL (beta), style search over a curated brand corpus (alpha), and brand-adherence verification against a reference site (alpha). Extract and Verify run as async jobs. Results come back as JSON plus captured HTML, CSS and screenshots. Access is via REST or the MCP server at mcp.tastelabs.com/mcp.launched 15 Sep 2026

Prototype fellowship ↗

A research fellowship on machine creativity, design and human-model interaction. Fellows get human data, compute, collaborators and a stipend.launched 16 Aug 2026

TasteMakers community ↗

Taste's human-data network of expert creatives who run paid design projects in UI/UX, brand, web and generative work. Applicants pass a short test to join. Taste describes it as 'a human data and creative network working with leading AI labs, tech companies, and brands' (self-claim).

Scale & velocity

Current headcount

~12 (team pictured on careers page)estimated cite

Headcount growth

unknown cite

Open roles

9confirmed cite

Other locations

unknown cite

Distributed / remote

unknown

Research depth

Has researchers

yesreported cite

Researcher count

unknown cite

Backgrounds

unknown cite

Papers / benchmarks

unknown cite

Capital

Total raised

$18.5M (seed, 2026-06)confirmed cite

Last round

Seed, $18.5M, 2026-06-16, co-led by CRV and Amplify Partnersconfirmed cite

Investors

CRV, Amplify Partnersconfirmed cite

Valuation

unknown cite

Revenue signals

Self-claims work with 'the top frontier labs' (none named). Paid Brand API plans ($99-$749/mo plus enterprise). One named API customer case study (vendor-published). No revenue figures disclosed.confirmed cite

Date	Round	Amount	Led by
16 Jun 2026	Seed	$18.5M	CRV, Amplify Partners	source ↗

Security & compliance

SOC 2

unknown cite

Other certifications

unknown cite

Security page

none found cite

Product

What they sell

human data + environmentsconfirmed cite

Open source

noestimated cite

License

proprietaryestimated cite

Deployment model

Custom data/environment engagements with frontier labs; self-serve SaaS API + MCP server (Brand API) for agent/app buildersconfirmed cite

Maturity

early-stage (seed; Brand API in beta/alpha)confirmed cite

Notable customers

General Intelligence Company of New York (Cofounder) self-claimed cite

Buyer analysis

Best fit: Labs that need expert preference data, rubrics or eval environments for aesthetic and design work (UI, web, visual generation), and agent builders that need their outputs to stay on-brand.

How we verified this

2026-10-05 initial profile: I re-opened every primary source: the Amplify announcement, Taste's homepage, API page, blog index, five blog posts, the case study and careers page (read via r.jina.ai because the site returns 403), CRV's portfolio page, the TasteMakers site, the LinkedIn company page, the YouTube video metadata and the arXiv paper linked from the Requests for Research. The funding ($18.5M seed, 2026-06-16, co-led by CRV and Amplify), the founding date (October 2025, from CRV), the founder, the product descriptions, the Brand API endpoints, MCP server and pricing, the 9 open roles, and every news date in the window all match their sources. The corrections were small. The AI Engineer talk's real title is 'Training Taste'. The 'hybrid research lab' quote is from the homepage, so I fixed its source. A linked arXiv paper on procedural fingerprinting is mentioned with a caveat, because arXiv shows no Taste affiliation. The frontier-lab work is still an unnamed self-claim, and the only named customer comes from a case study Taste published itself. I found no SOC 2 or security page, no benchmarks, and no other funding rounds. My web search budget ran out, so I could not check for third-party press beyond Amplify and CRV.

Related vendors

Sources

www.amplifypartners.com/blog-posts/kill-the-slop-announcing-our-investme · 2026-10-05, Seed announcement, 2026-06-16: $18.5M, Amplify co-leading, founder background, product description
tastelabs.com/ · 2026-10-05, Official site, read via r.jina.ai because a direct fetch returned 403: frontier-lab claim, CRV co-lead, 9 open roles, 'hybrid research lab'
www.crv.com/companies/taste-labs · 2026-10-05, CRV portfolio page: founded Oct 2025, partnered Apr 2026, founder Thais Castello Branco
tastelabs.com/api · 2026-10-05, Brand API endpoints and their beta/alpha labels, MCP server, auth, pricing
tastelabs.com/blog · 2026-10-05, Blog index with post dates
tastelabs.com/blog/a-manifesto-for-judgement · 2026-10-05, Post-training data and RL environments; TasteMakers; working with research teams
tastelabs.com/blog/helping-agents-create-things-worth-making · 2026-10-05, Brand API launch, 2026-09-15
tastelabs.com/blog/introducing-prototype · 2026-10-05, Prototype fellowship, 2026-08-16
tastelabs.com/blog/requests-for-research · 2026-10-05, Research agenda; links arXiv 2606.16988
tastelabs.com/case-study/general-intelligence-company · 2026-10-05, Customer case study, 2026-10-05
tastelabs.com/careers · 2026-10-05, 12 named team members pictured, including the founder's headshot
tastemakers.tastelabs.com/ · 2026-10-05, TasteMakers human-data network
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDMGWK4wZ_w · 2026-10-05, AI Engineer talk 'Training Taste, Thais Castello Branco, Taste Labs'
arxiv.org/abs/2606.16988 · 2026-10-05, Procedural fingerprinting paper linked from the Requests for Research; no Taste affiliation shown
www.linkedin.com/company/taste-ai-labs · 2026-10-05, Company size 11-50

Last updated 2026-10-05 · Every quantitative field carries a source and a confidence tag. Fields we could not source publicly are marked unknown, never estimated. See the methodology.