idler Raises $9M Seed

idler, a San Francisco, California-based frontier data research lab and artificial intelligence evaluation platform, has raised $9 million in seed funding. The company focuses on developing comprehensive benchmarking suites and reinforcement learning environments for frontier AI models.

Investors

The round was led by Paradigm, with participation from Y Combinator and Long Journey. Additional investors included angel investors Manish Chandra, Catheryn Li, Dan Posch, Janine Leger, Lynett Capital, Feross Aboukhadijeh, Nur Bazylbekov, and Smaiyl Makyshov.

idler Use of Funds

The company will use the capital to expand its core machine learning research team, scale its compute infrastructure, and accelerate the development of complex reinforcement learning environments and evaluation datasets tailored for frontier AI models.

About idler

Founded to serve the needs of global AI labs, idler operates a research lab and evaluation platform. The company specializes in engineering long-horizon software engineering, cybersecurity, and safety testing beds, recently launching its ShelfLife benchmark to stress-test autonomous financial and strategy agents.

Funding Details

Company Website: https://idler.ai

Company: idler
Raised: $9M
Round: Seed
Funding Date: August 21, 2026
Lead Investor: Paradigm
Additional Investors: Y Combinator, Long Journey, Manish Chandra, Catheryn Li, Dan Posch, Janine Leger, Lynett Capital, Feross Aboukhadijeh, Nur Bazylbekov, Smaiyl Makyshov
Software Category: Artificial Intelligence
Source: https://www.finsmes.com/2026/08/idler-raises-9m-in-seed-funding.html