AI NewsThe leaderboard “you can’t game,” funded by the companies it ranks

The leaderboard “you can’t game,” funded by the companies it ranks

1:12 AM IST · March 19, 2026

Loading the player… Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR cycles. In just seven months, the startup went from a UC Berkeley PhD research project tobeing valued at $1.7 billion. Watch asEquityhost Rebecca Bellan catches up with Arena co-foundersAnastasios AngelopoulosandWei-Lin Chiangabout how their platform became the go-to leaderboard for frontier AI models, and how they’re trying to build a neutral benchmark even as companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic back the project. They break down how Arena works and why it’s harder to game than static benchmarks, what “structural neutrality” actually means, why Claude is currently topping expert leaderboards in legal and medical use cases, and how the company is expanding beyond chat to benchmark agents, coding, and real-world tasks with a new enterprise product. Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.