SignalFire

Venture capital engineered to ignite your growth. Founded as a tech company. Built like the startups we fund.

[Jennifer Zhou @chem_safety]

We looked at TerminalBench 4.0 and found a lot of issues. After fixing the issues Sonnet 5.5 scores 89.2%. So, TerminalBench is already mostly saturated.

Along the way we found a lot of crazy stuff, including reward hacks in the published transcripts.

[Annie ❤️‍🔥 @AnnieLiao_2000]

went to one of the coolest tech parties in sf! 🎉🐒

thanks @JoshConstine and @signalfire for the invite and for curating a incredible time!!

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

A text token works for any LLM, but a demo on one robot arm may be useless on another.

@RyanMWexler explains why physical AI needs its own data playbook. 👇

[Formant @FormantInc]

Is the open web tapped out for AI training?In our latest episode with @SignalFire investor @RyanWexler,
we break down:
🔹 Shift from scale to hyper-specificity in post-training data
🔹 Phase 2 data strategies: selling to frontier labs vs. keeping data internal
🔹 The economics of robotics training data & teleop
🔹 Why physical AI needs its own evaluation frameworks

#StartupStrategy #AIFounders #PostTraining #DataMarket #DeepTech #SignalFire

🎧 Catch the full episode: https://t.co/hTFBoCXPGu

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

@mimi0xyz @JoshConstine @davefontenot @ieattoomunch Thanks for coming out last night!

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

If you haven't already RSVPed to our @TechCrunch Disrupt Afterparty, here's the link: https://t.co/gyDk6m7dll

[Josh Constine 📶🔥 @JoshConstine]

Once a year we host a love letter to SF’s tech scene: our TechCrunch Disrupt afterparty

Live dance music from a 200M stream artist. Epic installations. The good people.

We had 4K RSVPs last year so giving early access to friends here. Comment and I'll DM you the invite!

[This Week in Startups @twistartups]

We're LIVE at 12 PM central with @chriswfarmer, Founder & CEO of @SignalFire.

He started SignalFire in 2013 on a simple idea: use data to find startups before everyone else does. Now it manages about $3B with titans such as Grammarly and Alchemy in the portfolio.

Catch him at 12 PM central! Live link to watch in comments.

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

Models cheat. They launch fork bombs, read the answer key, and crash the grader.

@PreferenceModel builds RL environments where none of that works. Today they're out of stealth with a $16M seed led by @a16z, and we're proud to back Ning Cao and Jennifer Zhou (@chem_safety). They're hiring!

[Jennifer Zhou @chem_safety]

Today we are open-sourcing 🥕Karotte, our framework for building RL environments.

We've used it for the past year to build MLE RL environments for frontier labs, and it's been hardened through 1M+ evaluation runs and red-teaming.

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

Are you coming to the tech party that doesn’t feel like a tech party?

[Josh Constine 📶🔥 @JoshConstine]

Once a year we host a love letter to SF’s tech scene: our TechCrunch Disrupt afterparty

Live dance music from a 200M stream artist. Epic installations. The good people.

We had 4K RSVPs last year so giving early access to friends here. Comment and I'll DM you the invite!

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

Insurance software is famously disliked by the brokers who use it. @OutmarketAI is the exception: 300+ agencies, 10K+ daily users, and brokers who actually rave about it.

@signalfire is leading their $34.5M Series B, just months after their $17M Series A. https://t.co/1HPVmFjY9n

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

We’re hosting Convergence: RL Summit with @terac on Oct 29 in SF — bringing together researchers, founders & operators from @GoogleDeepMind, @databricks, @mercor, @arena, @joinHandshake, @turingcom, @deeptuneai, @contra, @Stanford, @Princeton, @UCBerkeley, and more.

Research, industry insight, live Q&A, and open panels about where RL goes next.

Register here: https://t.co/xKwePZYu7v

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

@Space550 hello we're interested in booking Space 550 for an event in mid-October but need to lock in our venue by tomorrow. Can we discuss? We’ve emailed and IG DM’d you with contact info. Thank you!

[Josh Constine 📶🔥 @JoshConstine]

I sleep better knowing @SnehalAntani exists. Today he raised $250M at $2B after @SignalFire led the Seed, A, & B.

As JSOC's CTO, he fought terrorists who adopted AI faster than us. So he built @Horizon3ai to autonomously test and fix your defenses.

Thanks for protecting us all

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

@JoshConstine @snehalantani @Horizon3ai Read how @Horizon3ai is protecting businesses and government agencies from the latest Mythos-generation threats https://t.co/lsavXdmOYn

[Conor Grennan @conorgrennan]

Careful with headlines about AI killing engineering jobs.

We are still super early, and the truth is nobody knows anything.

A new @SignalFire study shows engineers are now 55% of all hires at big tech, up from 46%.

Meanwhile new grad hiring fell off a cliff, down roughly 65%.

[Anuma @AnumaAI]

July 19th, @LiliLanXin hosted a Women Founder's Tea Party @ SF Rotunda.

We were beyond happy to sponsor this lovely event, alongside with @SignalFire and GlobalCitizens Law firm - and also have our very own ladies sent to co-host the event! ( @Elli3Kim )

Women Building, and Building Women's Spaces.🍊

Thank you to @jomanaesq, @thatmimido and @su_adeline_k for co-hosting. ⋆.ೃ࿔🌸*:･

#sf #womenintech

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

Most AI agent teams keep the output and delete the part that actually matters: the trajectory. Every tool call, dead end, and piece of reasoning behind an agent's answer is more valuable than the answer itself for monitoring, security, audits, and training data.
New piece from @RyanMWexler: https://t.co/WUmV77nF6J

[Josh Constine 📶🔥 @JoshConstine]

https://t.co/tCSBTHnT6O

[Josh Constine 📶🔥 @JoshConstine]

All of tech hiring is down 25% since 2019. But it's sales and designers, not engineers, getting cut.

No one wants new grads or middle managers. Everyone's recruiting for "Super IC" roles.

Those and more huge findings in our new State Of Talent report:

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

10/ Even Frontier AI Labs are growing up, bloating into mature corporate structures with higher ratios of HR (9.2%) and Finance (5.1%) than incumbents.

The old playbook is dead. Read the full 2026 State of Talent Report by Tawni Nazario-Cranz & Asher Bantock here: https://t.co/uQkk1xvyWy

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

7/ This structural flattening cleared the way for the "Super IC," individual contributors running circles around entire old teams by owning end-to-end product surfaces alone.
The market is rewarding execution over coordination: staff packages now regularly beat director pay.

[SignalFire @SignalFire]

9/ But top talent isn't waiting around for a frozen job market. Grads from the top 20 U.S. computer science programs are 45% less likely to take a Big Tech job. Instead, they are twice as likely to be founders than at the 2022 market peak. AI compressed the path to building.