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Sometimes an apparently good idea, a big raise from a big-name VC, and a sea of well-connected angel investors is not enough. <\/p>\n
Less than a year after launching, Yupp.ai is closing its business, co-founders Pankaj Gupta and Gilad Mishne announced<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Yupp offered a crowdsourced AI model-picking service. It allowed consumers to test and compare results from a supply of 800 AI models for free, including the state-of-the-art ones from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic. Yupp would return multiple replies from the prompt request, including information or images, and users would offer feedback on which models worked best for them and why.<\/p>\n The idea was to generate anonymized data on what people actually need from AI that the model makers would then pay for. Yupp said it signed up 1.3 million users and collected millions of preferences every month. It even had a leaderboard. The company said it also had a few AI labs as customers.<\/p>\n But alas, \u201cwe didn\u2019t reach a strong enough product-market fit\u201d to survive, in part because AI models improved by such leaps and bounds these past few months, the founders said.<\/p>\n While labs are paying big bucks for feedback, the current model \u2014 pioneered by companies like Scale AI and Mercor \u2014 is to hire specialty experts, like PhDs, and tuck them into the reinforcement learning loop.<\/p>\n On top of that, Silicon Valley is already looking 10 miles down the road, when AI is built for, and being used by, other AIs. Model makers might want some consumer feedback now, but they are largely building for the day when agents, not humans, rule the online world<\/a>.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> \u201cThe AI model capability landscape has changed dramatically in the last year alone and will continue to change quickly,\u201d Gupta, Yupp.ai\u2019s CEO, wrote in a post on X<\/a> about the plans to shutter. \u201cThe future is not just models but agentic systems.\u201d<\/p>\n Yupp.ai raised a $33 million seed round in 2024 led by a16z crypto\u2019s Chris Dixon, a giant seed round for its day. In addition, Yupp.ai raised checks from more than 45 angels and small investors, it said.<\/a> This included luminaries like Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean; Twitter co-founder Biz Stone; Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp; and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.<\/p>\n Gupta said some of Yupp\u2019s employees are joining a \u201cwell known\u201d AI company, and others are looking for their next gig. Yupp.ai did not immediately respond to TechCrunch\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n