AI Forecasting Startup Mantic Secures $25 Million Seed Funding After Tournament Success

London-based artificial intelligence developer Mantic has secured $25 million in seed funding following a competitive tournament showing where its predictive systems outperformed human forecasters. The funding round was led by Radical Ventures at an undisclosed valuation, with additional backing from Microsoft venture fund M12, Thinking Machines Lab, and Balderton Capital.

The investment follows the conclusion of the summer 2026 Metaculus Cup, an online forecasting competition where Mantic assigned probabilities to political, economic, and cultural developments with higher accuracy than human competitors. The event marked a milestone in competitive forecasting as artificial intelligence systems dominated top placements, with Mantic outperforming every human contestant alongside a competing bot named laertes.

Mantic was co-founded in 2024 by CEO Toby Shevlane and Ben Day after Shevlane left Alphabet unit Google DeepMind. According to Shevlane, his previous work as a research scientist sparked the startup concept because he frequently needed assistance predicting global events relevant to artificial intelligence development.

The startup operates by taking frontier AI models developed by other laboratories and specializing them specifically for forecasting tasks. The predictive system is tested on historical data, graded for performance, and iteratively refined. Speaking on the company's trajectory, Shevlane stated in an interview, "We're now upgrading the level at which humans can understand the future."

during the Metaculus Cup, company leadership attributed part of Mantic's success to its systematic resistance against conventional consensus and herd mentality. In one tournament question concerning music chart rankings, human forecasters overwhelmingly bet that pop star Shakira's track "Dai Dai" would fail to overtake "Waka Waka" on the Billboard Hot 100. That consensus proved incorrect, and Mantic avoided heavy positioning on the popular bet.

Early in the competition, the startup also assigned approximately a 40 percent probability to Abelardo De La Espriella winning Colombia's presidential election, contrasting with a roughly 30 percent consensus forecast among human participants. De La Espriella ultimately secured the victory, validating the platform's probabilistic assessment over standard polling aggregation.

Aaron Rosenberg, a partner at Radical Ventures who has assumed a seat on Mantic's board of directors, noted that the startup has already attracted substantial commercial and governmental interest globally. While Mantic declined to disclose specific client identities, Rosenberg highlighted that corporate entities, government agencies, hedge funds, and trading firms have expressed urgency for predictive capabilities.

"If Mantic is superhuman as it is, they can make money off of that immediately," Rosenberg said. In addition to software integration, industry reports indicate the London-based firm has established a physical experimental facility in the San Francisco Bay Area to support ongoing research and development operations.