Yupp shuts down after raising $33M from a16z crypto’s Chris Dixon

Sometimes a seemingly good idea, a big raise from a major venture capital investment, and a sea of ​​well-connected angel investors isn’t enough.

Less than a year after launching, Yupp is closing his company, co-founders Pankaj Gupta and Gilad Mishne announced on Tuesday.

Yupp offered a crowdsourced AI model picking service. This allowed consumers to test and compare results from a range of 800 AI models for free, including state-of-the-art models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. Yupp would return multiple answers to the prompt request, including information or images, and users would provide feedback on which models worked best for them and why.

The idea was to generate anonymized data about what people actually need from AI, which the model makers would then pay for. Yupp said it has signed up 1.3 million users every month and collected millions of preferences. There was even a ranking. The company said it also had some AI labs as customers.

But unfortunately, the product “didn’t find a strong enough market fit” to survive, in part because AI models have advanced by leaps and bounds in recent months, the founders said.

While labs pay a lot of money for feedback, the current model – developed by companies like Scale AI and Mercor – aims to hire specialized experts, such as PhDs, and put them in the learning loop.

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

“The landscape of AI model capabilities has changed dramatically in the past year alone and will continue to change rapidly,” wrote Gupta, Yupp’s CEO. a message on X about the plans to close. “The future consists not only of models, but of agentic systems.”

Yupp raised a $33 million seed round in 2024 led by Chris Dixon of a16z crypto, a huge seed round at the time. In addition, Yupp has raised checks from more than 45 angels and retail investors, it said. This included celebrities like Jeff Dean, chief scientist of Google DeepMind; Twitter co-founder Biz Stone; Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp; and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

Gupta said some Yupp employees will be joining a “well-known” AI company, while others are looking for their next gig. Yupp did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.