We develop methods, benchmarks, and training systems that turn expert data into frontier AI

building benchmarks and collaborating with

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key research areas

Vision and impact

We help labs advance frontier models by working with domain experts to design and build complex, realistic datasets that drive model performance.

initiatives

Community and open science

Open benchmarks, conversations, and research for real-world AI performance.

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Open Benchmarks Grants

Backed by a $30M commitment, Open Benchmarks Grants funds new benchmarks, red-teams existing ones to find weaknesses, and supports researchers through a fellowship.

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Benchtalks

Our podcast series at the intersection of AI evaluation, data quality, and real-world impact.
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Reading Group

A recurring forum for researchers and practitioners to explore the latest frontier developments in AI while building meaningful connections within the community.

DEEP RESEARCH Expertise

Technical advisors and distinguished affiliates

Stephen Bach headshot

Stephen Bach

Brown University
Eliot Horowitz Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department
Jason Fries headshot

Jason Fries

Stanford University
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science and of Medicine
Jared Dunnmon headshot

Jared Dunnmon

Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, Stealth Startup
Prev. Dir. of AI at DIU
Fred Sala headshot

Fred Sala

Chief Scientist
,
Snorkel AI
Assistant Professor @ University of Wisconsin-Madison
Chris Ré headshot

Chris Ré

Co-Founder
,
Snorkel AI
Professor @ Stanford University
Ludwig Schmidt headshot

Ludwig Schmidt

Stanford University · LAION
Stanford researcher and LAION collaborator
Karthik Narasimhan headshot

Karthik Narasimhan

Princeton University
Professor of Computer Science
Yu Su headshot

Yu Su

Ohio State University
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
Lewis Tunstall headshot

Lewis Tunstall

Hugging Face
Machine Learning Engineer
PUBLICATIONS

Browse research blogs
and academic papers

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The self-critique paradox: Why AI verification fails where it’s needed most
Blog
The self-critique paradox: Why AI verification fails where it’s needed most

TL;DR: We stress-tested the “generate → criticize → improve” loop on 50 visual reasoning tasks. The results were counterintuitive: self-critique acts as a corrosive agent on high-performance tasks, turning 98% accuracy into 57%. Yet, for tasks where models fail completely, it works like magic. This difficulty-dependent behavior poses a critical, hidden risk for RLFT pipelines. The promise vs. the reality…

Nov 26, 2025 •
Learn more about The self-critique paradox: Why AI verification fails where it’s needed most
A chat with the Terminal-Bench team
Blog
A chat with the Terminal-Bench team

Snorkel Chief Scientist Fred Sala and Kobie Crawford chat with the Terminal-Bench team to unpack the design behind Terminal-Bench 2.0 and the new Harbor framework.

Nov 19, 2025 •
Learn more about A chat with the Terminal-Bench team
Intelligence per watt: A new metric for AI’s future
Blog
Intelligence per watt: A new metric for AI’s future

Snorkel AI contributes specialized datasets to Hazy Research’s “Intelligence-per-Watt” study, advancing how efficiently AI turns energy into intelligence.

Nov 12, 2025 •
Learn more about Intelligence per watt: A new metric for AI’s future
Intelligence per watt: Measuring intelligence efficiency of local AI
Large language model (LLM) queries are predominantly processed by frontier models in centralized cloud infrastructure. Rapidly growing demand strains this paradigm, and cloud providers struggle to scale infrastructure at pace. Two advances enable us to rethink this paradigm: small LMs (<=20B active parameters) now achieve competitive performance to frontier models on many tasks, and local accelerators (e.g., Apple M4 Max) run these models at interactive latencies. This raises the question: can local inference viably redistribute demand from centralized infrastructure? Answering this requires measuring whether local LMs can accurately answer real-world queries and whether they can do so efficiently enough to...
Research Paper
Intelligence per watt: Measuring intelligence efficiency of local AI

Large language model (LLM) queries are predominantly processed by frontier models in centralized cloud infrastructure. Rapidly growing demand strains this paradigm, and cloud providers struggle to scale infrastructure at pace. Two advances enable us to rethink this paradigm: small LMs (<=20B active parameters) now achieve competitive performance to frontier models on many tasks, and local accelerators (e.g., Apple M4 Max)…

Nov 11, 2025 •

Jon Saad-Falcon, Avanika Narayan, Hakki Orhun Akengin, J. Wes Griffin, Herumb Shandilya, Adrian Gamarra Lafuente, Medhya Goel, Rebecca Joseph, Shlok Natarajan, Etash Kumar Guha, Shang Zhu, Ben Athiwaratkun, John Hennessy, Azalia Mirhoseini, Christopher Ré

Learn more about Intelligence per watt: Measuring intelligence efficiency of local AI
Terminal-Bench 2.0: Raising the bar for AI agent evaluation
Blog
Terminal-Bench 2.0: Raising the bar for AI agent evaluation

Terminal-Bench 2.0 launches today, marking a major leap in AI agent evaluation. Snorkel AI contributed key research and task design to this release.

Nov 07, 2025 •
Learn more about Terminal-Bench 2.0: Raising the bar for AI agent evaluation
Snorkeling in RL environments
Blog
Snorkeling in RL environments

We unpack what makes a high-quality RL environment for LLMs and show how we build realistic, enterprise-grade environments at Snorkel AI.

Nov 04, 2025 •
Learn more about Snorkeling in RL environments
Automating benchmark design
The rapid progress and widespread deployment of LLMs and LLM-powered agents has outpaced our ability to evaluate them. Hand-crafted, static benchmarks are the primary tool for assessing model capabilities, but these quickly become saturated. In contrast, dynamic benchmarks evolve alongside the models they evaluate, but are expensive to create and continuously update. To address these challenges, we develop BeTaL (Benchmark Tuning with an LLM-in-the-loop), a framework that leverages environment design principles to automate the process of dynamic benchmark design. BeTaL works by parameterizing key design choices in base benchmark templates and uses LLMs to reason through the resulting parameter space...
Research Paper
Automating benchmark design

The rapid progress and widespread deployment of LLMs and LLM-powered agents has outpaced our ability to evaluate them. Hand-crafted, static benchmarks are the primary tool for assessing model capabilities, but these quickly become saturated. In contrast, dynamic benchmarks evolve alongside the models they evaluate, but are expensive to create and continuously update. To address these challenges, we develop BeTaL (Benchmark…

Oct 30, 2025 •

Amanda Dsouza, Harit Vishwakarma, Zhengyang Qi, Justin Bauer, Derek Pham, Thomas Walshe, Armin Parchami, Frederic Sala, Paroma Varma

Learn more about Automating benchmark design
Beyond accuracy: Dissecting mathematical reasoning for LLMs under reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) has become the dominant paradigm for improving the performance of language models on complex reasoning tasks. Despite the substantial empirical gains demonstrated by RL-based training methods like GRPO, a granular understanding of why and how RL enhances performance is still lacking. To bridge this gap, we introduce SPARKLE, a fine-grained analytic framework to dissect the effects of RL across three key dimensions: (1) plan following and execution, (2) knowledge integration, and (3) chain of subproblems. Using this framework, we gain insights beyond mere accuracy. For instance, providing models with explicit human-crafted, step-by-step plans can surprisingly degrade performance...
Research Paper
Accepted to NeurIPS
Beyond accuracy: Dissecting mathematical reasoning for LLMs under reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become the dominant paradigm for improving the performance of language models on complex reasoning tasks. Despite the substantial empirical gains demonstrated by RL-based training methods like GRPO, a granular understanding of why and how RL enhances performance is still lacking. To bridge this gap, we introduce SPARKLE, a fine-grained analytic framework to dissect the effects of…

Oct 24, 2025 •

Jiayu Wang, Yifei Ming, Zixuan Ke, Caiming Xiong, Shafiq Joty, Aws Albarghouthi, Frederic Sala

Learn more about Beyond accuracy: Dissecting mathematical reasoning for LLMs under reinforcement learning
Introducing SnorkelSpatial
Blog
Introducing SnorkelSpatial

A procedurally generated and programmatically verified benchmark for evaluating spatial reasoning capabilities in LLMs Large language models (LLMs) are showing remarkable results on solving complex reasoning problems across domains—from mathematical proofs and logical puzzles to graduate-level science and engineering questions. On the other hand, their spatial reasoning capabilities are less understood, even though such reasoning underlies many everyday tasks. We…

Oct 24, 2025 •
Learn more about Introducing SnorkelSpatial
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October 8, 2026 | San francisco

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A one-day, invite-only summit providing a first look at the benchmarks and research that will shape the frontier.

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