# Adam Wenchel

> Adam Wenchel is the co-founder and CEO of Arthur, a New York-based company building tools that monitor, evaluate, and secure AI models in production. He started in AI research at DARPA as a University of Maryland undergrad in the late 1990s, spent 15-plus years building and leading engineering teams across startups, founded the cybersecurity startup Anax Security, and after its 2015 acquisition by Capital One scaled the bank's machine learning division to nearly 300 people. He launched Arthur in 2019 to fix what he saw as a missing piece of the AI stack - the guardrails that keep deployed models honest, fair, and reliable.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Arthur
- **Organizations:** Arthur, Capital One, Anax Security, Endgame, Everfi, Govolution, Positive Development, HeyMax Interactive, DARPA, University of Maryland
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S. in Computer Science, University of Maryland
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Arthur, an AI monitoring, evaluation and security company serving enterprise customers including major US banks and the Department of Defense., Raised over $63M for Arthur from investors including Index Ventures, Greycroft and Work-Bench., Built and scaled Capital One's Center for Machine Learning to nearly 300 people.

## Career timeline

- **1990s** — Conducted AI research at DARPA while an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, working on the COABS (Control of Agent Based Systems) program led by Jim Hendler.
- **1999** — Earned a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland; continued at DARPA for roughly two more years.
- **2000** — Led software development for social networking startup HeyMax Interactive at age 24.
- **2000s** — Led design and engineering at startups including Govolution, Positive Development, Everfi and Endgame.
- **2014** — Founded and led Anax Security, a DC-based startup using machine learning for large-scale defensive cybersecurity.
- **2015** — Anax Security acquired by Capital One; Wenchel joined to help start the bank's AI division.
- **2016** — Launched Capital One's Center for Machine Learning (C4ML), scaling it to nearly 300 people as VP of AI & Data Innovation.
- **2017** — Became Chair of the Computer Science Advisory Board at the University of Maryland.
- **2019** — Co-founded Arthur and became CEO, building tooling to monitor and secure AI models in production.
- **2022** — Arthur raised a $42M Series B, bringing total funding above $60M.
- **2023** — Arthur released Bench, an open-source tool for evaluating and comparing large language models.
- **2025** — Arthur open-sourced the Arthur Engine, a real-time AI evaluation engine; later launched an Agent Discovery & Governance platform.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Arthur, an AI monitoring, evaluation and security company serving enterprise customers including major US banks and the Department of Defense.
- Raised over $63M for Arthur from investors including Index Ventures, Greycroft and Work-Bench.
- Built and scaled Capital One's Center for Machine Learning to nearly 300 people.
- Founded Anax Security, acquired by Capital One in 2015.
- Delivered a University of Maryland commencement keynote and chairs its Computer Science Advisory Board.
- Endowed a $3M gift and established the Rosemary Wenchel Memorial Scholarship at the University of Maryland.
- Led Arthur's open-sourcing of Bench and the Arthur Engine, releasing core evaluation tools for free.

## Latest updates

- **2025-03** — Arthur open-sourced the Arthur Engine, described as the first open-source real-time AI evaluation engine.
- **2025-05** — Wenchel delivered a University of Maryland commencement keynote and was profiled by the university's computer science department.
- **2025-06** — Appeared on the Evil Martians podcast discussing developer empathy and the last-mile problem in AI deployment.
- **2025-12** — Arthur launched an Agent Discovery & Governance platform for managing agentic AI in production.

## Links

- Website: https://arthur.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/apwenchel

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/adam-wenchel
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-06