Methodology
How RL.VENDORS is researched
RL.VENDORS is a structured directory of companies building infrastructure, data, environments, evaluations, and related capabilities for reinforcement learning and agent systems.
The directory is designed to make public market information easier to compare while keeping unknown or conflicting information explicit.
01What gets listed
A company is listed when public evidence shows it offers products, services, infrastructure, data, environments, or evaluations relevant to reinforcement learning and agent systems — and that offering is market-facing, sold or available to other organizations rather than only used internally.
Relevant areas include, among others:
- RL environments & agent infrastructure
- Training and human data
- Evaluations and AI safety / red teaming
- Enterprise, robotics, and coding applications
A vendor doesn’t need to cover every area to be listed. Inclusion depends on publicly verifiable relevance, not company size or popularity.
What is generally excluded
Entities without that same direct, market-facing role are generally excluded, even when closely related — for example:
- Standalone GitHub projects, datasets, or benchmarks with no vendor offering
- Academic labs and nonprofit foundations without a commercial product
- Generic agent tooling with no direct role in the RL market
- Companies primarily shipping their own models rather than selling to this market
Relevant entities outside this scope may still be documented separately as ecosystem resources, keeping the directory focused on companies with a direct commercial offering.
02How companies are classified
Each vendor is described along three dimensions:
Focus Areas
What part of the ecosystem the vendor contributes to — e.g., RL environments, human data, evaluations, AI safety.
Domains
Where its capabilities are applied — e.g., software engineering, finance, healthcare, robotics.
Services & Capabilities
Specific offerings, such as custom environments, human expert data, or managed infrastructure.
A company can belong to multiple classifications when public evidence supports it.
Primary market segment
Each vendor is also assigned exactly one primary market segment — its most directly positioned offering — separate from the secondary focus areas, domains, services, and capabilities above.
03How we research vendors
Vendors are researched using official sources first — company and product pages, blogs, funding announcements, and trust or research pages — followed by other official profiles such as GitHub and LinkedIn. Reputable independent reporting is used only where first-party sources are silent.
Stronger evidence
An explicit founding year on an About page, a named security certification on a trust page, a stated funding amount, or a documented product capability.
Not treated as proof on its own
Domain registration dates, first commits, blog-post dates, search snippets, or an unrelated or parent company’s information applied without direct evidence.
04How we handle uncertainty
The directory leaves a field unfilled when it cannot be verified — for founding year, team size, funding, security certification, and open-source status alike.
Missing evidence is never read as “no.” No verified certification doesn’t mean a vendor has none, and no open-source evidence doesn’t mean it’s proprietary — either status simply hasn’t been publicly confirmed.
How conflicting sources are handled
When sources disagree, we prefer current first-party evidence, then official company-controlled data, then the stronger or more recent source — otherwise the value stays unresolved rather than guessed. Extra care is taken with rebrands, parent companies, and divisions, since identity is easily misattributed.
05How key facts are represented
Funding
It does not represent total capital raised, valuation, acquisitions, or cumulative funding — for example, a disclosed $30M Series A may show as $30M even if other capital events exist.
Open-source status
Status generally falls into open source, partially open source / open core, proprietary, or not publicly documented. A public GitHub organization alone does not make a company’s core product open source — it may publish open tools while operating a proprietary commercial platform alongside them.
Security & compliance
Certifications are recorded only when a trustworthy public source states them explicitly. General claims such as “secure” or “enterprise-ready” don’t count as SOC 2 or similar certification — specific types (SOC 2 Type I/II, ISO 27001, and similar) require a source that explicitly states which one applies.
06Neutrality and rankings
RL.VENDORS presents structured company information, not a “best vendor” ranking. Vendors are never ranked by sponsorship, commercial relationship, size, funding, or popularity.
A listing does not constitute an endorsement, and absence from the directory is not a criticism.
07Keeping the directory trustworthy
Keeping information current
Vendor details are periodically rechecked, and each profile shows when it was last reviewed.
Corrections
Corrections should be supported by a public source, so the directory can update both the fact and its provenance.
Why sources are shown
Profiles list the public sources used during research. Sources are attached at the vendor level rather than to each field, so a listed source doesn’t necessarily support every fact shown.
Data over assumptions.