Snorkel expands its open AI benchmark commitment to $30 million

In a post dated October 7, 2026, Snorkel AI said it would expand its Open Benchmarks Grants commitment tenfold, from $3 million to $30 million. The stated beneficiaries are researchers, domain experts and open-source teams building open evaluations of advanced AI systems.

Part of the expansion would support maintaining tests, not just creating them. A planned Open Benchmarks Red Team would work with benchmark builders to find weaknesses such as reward-hacking exploits, contamination risks, ambiguous tasks and broken grading systems. Snorkel says the team would use its own data development and evaluation platform, share findings with the benchmark builders first, and help test fixes.

The company's argument is that tests lose value when models can too easily optimize for them. Benchmarks that become simple, static and closely correlated can distort development incentives, Snorkel writes. It is calling for more varied tests that are independently developed and continuously updated—not merely a larger collection of fixed scores.

The funding invitation covers several difficult-to-measure areas, including cybersecurity, scientific agents, long-running work and outputs without a single correct answer. It also includes “human uplift”: measuring whether AI assistance improves people's performance compared with working without it.

A separate planned Snorkel Research Fellowship would let fellows choose their own questions and lead projects through public release. Snorkel says it would provide a research co-advisor and funded access to domain experts, compute, and research and engineering support.

The $30 million is a commitment, not a reported tally of grants paid. The post does not break out cash and services, set a spending timetable or give individual award sizes. Both the red team and fellowship are described as forthcoming, without launch dates.