New Startup Will Officially Certify When AGI Has Been Achieved; Pricing Starts at $2M Per Declaration

SAN FRANCISCO—A startup called Arrived Intelligence launched Tuesday with a service to officially declare when artificial general intelligence has been achieved, a milestone that an estimated $4.3 billion in deferred executive salaries, pledged equity stakes, and contingent bonuses now legally hinge upon.

The company, which closed $18 million in seed funding, will convene an independent review panel of cognitive scientists, three philosophers, and a former benchmark researcher to evaluate whether any AI system constitutes general intelligence. Certification starts at $2 million per declaration; the company does not offer refunds.

"There is an enormous and growing cohort of technology executives who have pledged their salaries to the arrival of AGI and have no clear legal mechanism to start collecting again," said CEO Jordan Fink, 27. "We identified the gap."

Arrived Intelligence says three frontier AI labs are in early client discussions. The company's 16-page methodology document describes its evaluation framework as "holistic, comprehensive, and technically rigorous." It does not define intelligence.

"Phase two," Fink said when asked.

A 2025 Stanford survey found that 94 percent of AI researchers could not agree on a single definition of AGI and 31 percent described the question as "not well-posed." At least seven AI executives have made financial pledges contingent on the term since 2024.

Arrived Intelligence's Series A is expected to close before the company finalizes its scoring rubric.

"We're not concerned about the sequencing," said a company spokesperson. "We will know it when we see it. That's somewhat the whole product."