Post #303

AI observability startup hits $800M valuation in 18 months. Braintrust raised $80M Series B led by Iconiq. They monitor AI model quality and catch hallucinations for production systems. • $80M at $800M valuation • Customers: Notion, Replit, Cloudflare, Dropbox • Built custom database 80% faster at AI traces How it happened: • Ankur Goyal hit eval pain at Figma AI team • Surveyed 50 AI companies - all said "evals are main problem" • Built ugly prototype in 5 days → Zapier used immediately • Customers begged to pay before pricing existed Takeaway: When customers beg to pay for your ugly prototype, you've found something real. https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/17/braintrust-lands-80m-series-b-funding-round-become-observability-layer-ai/ #startups#funding