The AI Leaderboard Every Top Lab Watches - Inside LMArena's Real-World AI Battleground

What happens when three PhD students accidentally build the infrastructure that every major AI lab depends on? OR What if the AI benchmarks everyone trusts are measuring the wrong thing entirely?On this episode of the *1st10 Podcast*, host Boris Epstein sits down with Anastasios Angelopoulos, co-founder and CEO of LMArena, to unpack LMArena went from a Berkeley side project built with free pizza and zero revenue to a $100M company with 42 employees and tens of millions of users in under two years.Tune in to hear them talk about:- How Academic AI benchmarks measure the wrong things and real-world user feedback is - fundamentally changing how models compete- Why $100M wasn't crazy for a "seed" round - especially when a company has already proven product-market fit- The diversification play in AI, or why dozens of winners will emerge, not just one dominant player- Why Personalized AI i.e., individual leaderboards that route you to the best model is the obvious next step.- The uncomfortable automation truth - Rote jobs WILL disappear, period.- What happens when academic rigor meets commercial speed. (HINT: An unfair advantage in AI evaluation!)Specifically, don't miss Anastasios' surprisingly pragmatic advice on what AI's acceleration means for jobs, companies, and individuals and why being early to the AI revolution means you still have 20 years to position yourself.Chapters00:00 Introductions and ice-breakers05:41 The Academic Path That Accidentally Led to AI's Center08:36 A Side Project That Refused to Stay Small12:04 When Academics Realize They Built a Company15:50 The Bradley-Terry Model: Turning Preferences Into Ranked Data19:22 Your Personal AI Leaderboard Is Coming23:48 "We're 20 Years Ahead of the Pack"26:17 Why a $100M Seed Round Was the Rational Move29:58 Who Makes Up LMArena? And Why?34:47 The LMArena Hiring Philosophy36:56 The Jobs AI Will Definitely Kill40:12 Surf the Wave or Get Pulled UnderQuotes:"We're at Berkeley we're eating pizza, free pizza, making no money but Sam Altman cares what we're doing!" - Anastasios Angelopoulos (10:49)"We're academics by nature. We don't care about aggrandizing or enriching ourselves." - Anastasios Angelopoulos (12:28)"Who cares how well it does on a Math Olympiad? I do mathematics in my work, and even I don't care about it!" - Anastasios Angelopoulos (14:36)"We're very, very early... There's trillions of dollars of economic value that are waiting to be created." - Anastasios Angelopoulos (23:59)"If you're somebody who's proofreading text for grammatical mistakes [...] yeah, you should expect that that job is not going to be there in, like, 20 years!" - Anastasios Angelopoulos (38:19)"The right thing to do is probably to lean in, to try to use the technology, become an expert in it, and be at the forefront of modernizing your field. Because if you do that, then you can be carried with the wave. The problem is if you don't surf the wave, you might get caught in the pullback!" - Anastasios Angelopoulos (40:29)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Music by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi