Maihem

Maihem, founded in 2023 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, is a Y Combinator-backed AI startup that has pioneered automated quality assurance for AI applications. The company develops AI agents specifically designed to test, evaluate, and continuously monitor large language models (LLMs) and conversational AI systems, ensuring they perform reliably and safely from development through deployment.

Founded by Max Ahrens (PhD in Natural Language Processing from Oxford) and Eduardo Candela (PhD in AI Safety from Imperial College London), Maihem emerged from the founders' shared vision to make AI more reliable and safer. The duo met during their PhD studies in London and combined their expertise—Ahrens from his work on harmful narrative detection with the Alan Turing Institute and UK Ministry of Defence, and Candela from his research on AI safety for autonomous vehicles—to create a state-of-the-art simulation platform that addresses critical gaps in AI testing.

Maihem raised a $6 million seed round backed by Y Combinator, Moonfire, Firstminute, SciFi VC, Urban Innovation Fund, and founders from PayPal, Slack, and Deel. The company participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch, standing out among hundreds of AI startups for its innovative approach to AI quality assurance. Maihem's platform uses AI agents to simulate thousands of real-world personas with complex characteristics, generating critical edge cases and normal user behavior to stress-test LLM applications in controlled environments before production deployment.

The company's mission is to ensure AI benefits all of humanity by making AI systems reliable, safe, and performant across all real-world use cases—not just academic benchmarks. Maihem serves companies developing chatbots, customer service AI, healthcare AI assistants, and other conversational AI applications, helping them automate quality assurance, reduce hallucinations, and improve overall AI performance and safety.