A London-based AI startup is expanding its forecasting technology after outperforming human participants in a major online prediction tournament. Mantic said on Friday that it has raised $25 million in seed funding following its strong performance in the summer 2026 Metaculus Cup.
The online forecasting tournament, which concluded this month, showed Mantic assigning probabilities to political, economic and cultural developments more accurately than human competitors. The performance of Mantic and other AI entrants marked the 1st time technology dominated the competition.
Radical Ventures led Mantic’s funding round at an undisclosed valuation. Microsoft’s venture fund M12, Thinking Machines Lab, Balderton Capital and other investors also participated.
Mantic CEO Toby Shevlane said, “We’re now upgrading the level at which humans can understand the future.”
The company specialises in adapting frontier AI models developed by other labs to improve their forecasting abilities. Its system is tested against historical data, evaluated for accuracy and then improved, Shevlane said. He co-founded Mantic with Ben Day in 2024.
Shevlane said his previous work as a research scientist at Google DeepMind helped inspire the startup after he needed better tools to forecast global events relevant to AI.
During the Metaculus Cup, Mantic’s system also avoided the herd mentality seen among human forecasters, according to Shevlane. In one prediction, most human participants believed pop star Shakira’s “Dai Dai” would not surpass “Waka Waka” on the Billboard Hot 100. The prediction was incorrect, while Mantic did not strongly follow the consensus.
Early in the competition, Mantic gave Abelardo De La Espriella around a 40% chance of winning Colombia’s presidential election, compared with a roughly 30% consensus forecast, Shevlane said. De La Espriella ultimately won.
It went on to outperform every human contestant and all but 1 AI bot, called laertes, according to the tournament results.
Aaron Rosenberg, a partner at Radical Ventures and a member of it’s board, said companies and government agencies worldwide have shown interest in the startup, with some already using its AI. They declined to identify its customers.
Hedge funds and trading firms have shown particular interest in its forecasts, Rosenberg said.
“If Mantic is superhuman as it is, they can make money off of that immediately,” he said.
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