Haize Labs 🛡️

Ensuring AI is safe, reliable, and compliant before it goes live.

March 19, 2025

Spotlight

What if AI safety wasn't an afterthought, but a core part of every AI system?

Quick Pitch: Haize Labs is building the future of AI safety with automated tools that test large language models and AI agents. Acting as the "Moody’s for AI," Haize provides safety ratings and red-teaming services to identify vulnerabilities before deployment, ensuring AI systems are reliable, secure, and compliant.

 

The Problem

  • AI Safety Gap: There are rising safety concerns as more companies integrate generative AI into their offerings and use LLMs in consumer products.

  • Regulatory Pressure: Many AI companies don’t rigorously test their models for vulnerabilities, making compliance with regulations like the EU AI Act and SB 1047 difficult.

  • Enterprise Adoption Barrier: Without third-party validation, businesses hesitate to deploy AI due to security and reliability concerns.

Snapshot

  • Industry: AI Safety & Security

  • Headquarters: New York

  • Year Founded: 2023

  • Traction: Multi-million dollar contracts with AI leaders, including Anthropic, Scale AI, and AI21.

Founder Profiles

  • Leonard Tang, Co-Founder, CEO: Stanford ML researcher turned entrepreneur, specializing in AI safety and evaluation. Turned down a Stanford PhD to start Haize Labs. Harvard CS.

  • Steve Li, Co-Founder: Former Undergraduate Researcher at Berkeley AI Research. Specializes in adversarial AI testing and compliance. Harvard CS.

Funding

  • Last Round: Seed ($7M)

  • Lead Investor: General Catalyst (Stripe, Canva, Hubspot)

  • Other Investors: Soma Capital (Cruise, Rippling, Deel), Amjad Masad (Replit CEO), Scott Wu (Cognition Founder), Demi Guo (Pika CEO), Neil Shen (Sequoia China), and founders of Okta, Hugging Face, and more.

  • Total Funding: $7.5M

Revenue Engine

  • Foundation Model Testing: Safety red-teaming services for AI labs and research organizations.

  • Application Layer Testing: Reliability and evaluation services for companies building on top of foundation models.

  • Compliance Solutions: Independent verification for regulatory requirements.

What Users Love

  • Automated Testing: Reduces the need for manual prompt engineering.

  • Adaptive Technology: Works across foundation models and enterprise applications to detect failures.

  • Cost-Effective Assessments: Scales vulnerability testing efficiently.

  • Independent Compliance: Ensures AI systems meet safety regulations.

Playing Field

  • Robust Intelligence: Focused on AI security but lacks Haize’s automation depth.

  • Patronus AI: Focuses on AI evaluations but does not cover red-teaming comprehensively.

  • Arize AI: Primarily an AI observability platform, rather than an adversarial testing solution.

Haize Labs’ Edge: The only company providing automated red-teaming, AI security, and testing to ensure AI models work safely and reliably in real-world use cases.

Why It Matters

AI safety is no longer optional. As AI adoption grows, failures like Google's AI suggesting eating rocks and Air Canada's chatbot offering fake discounts expose the risks. Without independent oversight, these issues will continue to impact businesses and users alike.

What Sets Them Apart

  • Independent AI Safety Ratings: Establishing standardized public safety benchmarks for AI models.

  • AI Stress Testing at Scale: Automated fuzzing and red-teaming to simulate real-world adversarial scenarios.

  • Enterprise-Grade Compliance: Ensures AI models align with regulatory mandates before enforcement.

  • Industry-Wide Adoption: Works across foundation models and application-layer AI, making it broadly applicable.

  • Proven Market Traction: Despite being less than a year old, Haize Labs has secured major contracts with leading AI players like Anthropic and Scale AI.

Breakdown

Bulls Case 📈 

  • Addressing a rapidly growing market with regulatory tailwinds.

  • Strong early revenue with multiple high-value contracts.

  • Positioned to expand beyond safety testing into the larger application evaluation market.

  • Backing from top-tier investors including General Catalyst and AI industry leaders.

Bears Case 📉 

  • Competing against AI companies that might develop in-house solutions.

  • Execution risk in scaling from foundation model testing to application layer.

  • Need to establish industry-wide standards in a nascent market.

  • Market education required—AI companies need to prioritize safety before major failures occur.

Verdict

Haize Labs is building the infrastructure for AI safety. Its combination of automated adversarial testing, safety ratings, and regulatory compliance tools gives it a strong first-mover advantage in a market that is only becoming more critical. With top-tier customers, a strong founding team, and a growing regulatory tailwind, Haize Labs is positioned to become a foundational player in AI safety. Their success hinges on expanding beyond foundation models to the broader application layer and becoming the industry standard for AI safety.

The Startup Pulse

  • Google Acquires Wiz for $32B: Google is making its largest acquisition yet by purchasing cloud security startup Wiz. The deal strengthens its cloud security capabilities against competitors like AWS and Microsoft Azure.

  • Onyx Raises $10M: The open-source enterprise search startup secured funding to enhance features and scale its team. With Netflix as a key client, Onyx is strengthening its market position.

  • Worth Raises $20M: Founded by the sibling duo behind Stax Payments, Worth secured funding to automate SMB credit underwriting using AI and its proprietary database. Partnered with Equifax, it serves 25+ clients with a planned 2026 credit score launch.

Written by Ashher

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