AI Models Outperform Human Venture Capitalists by 6x in Predicting Startup Success, New Benchmark Study Reveals
Summary
Oxford-Vela researchers reveal AI models including GPT-4o and DeepSeek-V3 outperform human venture capitalists by six times in predicting startup success, analyzing 9,000 founder profiles and matching top-tier VC firm accuracy, potentially revolutionizing deal-sourcing and making startup investing more meritocratic.
Key Points
- Oxford-Vela researchers create VCBench, the first open benchmark testing whether AI can forecast startup success using 9,000 anonymized founder profiles with 810 labeled as successful
- Large language models including GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet significantly outperform human venture capitalists, with DeepSeek-V3 delivering six times better precision than market baseline
- AI models match or exceed the predictive power of Y Combinator and top-tier VC firms, suggesting LLMs could become essential deal-sourcing tools and make startup investing more meritocratic