SAN FRANCISCO, United States, November 13, 2026, Artificial intelligence startup Mirendil has raised $1 billion in a Series A funding round as investors increase their exposure to companies developing systems that could automate parts of AI research and development. The investment highlights growing interest in technologies designed to reduce the time and resources required to build advanced AI models.
The funding round was led by Kleiner Perkins and Clearlake Capital, according to a report published by The Wall Street Journal on November 13. The investment reportedly values Mirendil at approximately $5 billion and follows a $200 million seed round completed less than six months earlier.
Former Anthropic Employees Lead the Company
Mirendil was co-founded by Behnam Neyshabur and Harsh Mehta, both former Anthropic employees. The company is developing technology intended to accelerate AI research by using automated systems to perform tasks traditionally carried out by larger teams of human researchers.
Its approach focuses on enabling AI systems to assist with experimentation, model development and other research activities. The ambition is to reduce the resources needed to develop advanced models and potentially make sophisticated AI research more accessible to smaller teams and specialised industries.
The company’s strategy reflects a shift in the AI sector from building systems that primarily respond to user prompts towards tools capable of carrying out more complex technical workflows.
Automated Research Becomes a New Investment Theme
Mirendil recently demonstrated a process in which one researcher reportedly built a pretrained AI model over three and a half months using $10 million in computing resources. The company said this process would traditionally have required hundreds of researchers.
It has also introduced Lor, a platform featuring hundreds of AI agents designed to write code and conduct experiments independently. The technology aims to automate parts of the research process, potentially allowing teams to run more experiments and evaluate results more quickly.
These capabilities remain an emerging area of development. The company’s demonstrations and claims should be assessed in the context of model quality, reproducibility, computing costs and the amount of human supervision required.
Investors See Opportunities Beyond General-Purpose AI
Mirendil’s technology could have applications in fields such as drug discovery and robotics, where research often involves extensive experimentation and complex technical processes.
Automating selected research activities could help specialised teams explore more possibilities without increasing their workforce at the same rate. It may also reduce some of the time required to test hypotheses and develop new systems.
However, the development of systems capable of improving AI models raises questions about transparency, oversight and safety. Automated research tools must be evaluated for reliability, potential errors and the consequences of decisions made with limited human intervention.
A Large Funding Round Raises Expectations
The $1 billion investment gives Mirendil substantial resources to expand its research and product development. At the same time, the size of the round places considerable expectations on the company to demonstrate commercial progress and technical results.
Investors will likely monitor the company’s ability to turn its research platform into widely adopted products. Its long-term prospects will depend on whether automated AI research can deliver measurable improvements in efficiency, quality and cost while maintaining appropriate human oversight.
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