Mike Knoop

Who is Mike Knoop?

Mike Knoop is the co-founder of Zapier and a co-founder and board member of the ARC Prize Foundation, where he helps advance the ARC-AGI benchmark. He is best known for building products that automate work and for pushing AI evaluation toward harder, more human-relevant reasoning tasks. (arcprize.org)

Background and career

Knoop first became widely known as a co-founder of Zapier, the automation company that helped popularize no-code workflow automation across apps and teams. More recently, he has become a visible advocate for benchmark-driven AI progress through ARC Prize, a project he co-founded with François Chollet to focus attention on ARC-AGI. (arcprize.org)

In practice, that career arc connects product thinking with research infrastructure. Zapier taught a generation of builders how to remove manual work from software workflows, while ARC Prize is aimed at removing confusion around what current models can and cannot do. That makes Knoop relevant to AI teams that care about evaluation, reliable progress, and public benchmarks rather than hype. (arcprize.org)

Key facts about Mike Knoop include:

1. Current role: Co-founder and board member at ARC Prize Foundation. (arcprize.org)
2. Known for: Co-founding Zapier and helping create ARC Prize. (arcprize.org)
3. Benchmark focus: Publicly advancing ARC-AGI as a measure of human-like reasoning. (arcprize.org)
4. Public presence: Speaks in ARC Prize posts, reports, and university tour events. (arcprize.org)
5. Builder profile: Bridges product automation and AI research incentives. (arcprize.org)

Notable contributions

1. Zapier co-founder: Helped build one of the best-known automation platforms for connecting apps and workflows. (arcprize.org)
2. ARC Prize co-founder: Co-founded the ARC Prize Foundation to promote progress on ARC-AGI. (arcprize.org)
3. Public ARC-AGI advocacy: Helped launch the ARC-AGI public leaderboard and verification efforts. (arcprize.org)
4. Research outreach: Took part in the ARC Prize university tour to engage AI researchers and students. (arcprize.org)
5. Benchmark framing: Has emphasized that ARC Prize exists to highlight basic human capabilities that remain difficult for AI. (arcprize.org)

Why they matter in AI today

1. Benchmark discipline: His work reinforces that model progress needs clear, hard, public evaluation. (arcprize.org)
2. Open progress: ARC Prize pushes solutions into the open, which helps the field learn faster. (arcprize.org)
3. Reasoning over memorization: ARC-AGI is designed to test generalization, not just pattern recall. (arcprize.org)
4. Builder mindset: His background shows how product operators can influence AI research priorities. (arcprize.org)

Where to follow their work

The most reliable place to follow Mike Knoop’s current work is the ARC Prize site, including its about page, blog, resources, and technical reports. Those pages track the foundation’s mission, public leaderboard, competitions, and research updates. (arcprize.org)

For background on his product history, Zapier remains the key company reference, while ARC Prize is the best source for his current AI-related work. (arcprize.org)

How PromptLayer connects with Mike Knoop's work

Mike Knoop’s focus on benchmark quality and measurable progress lines up with how the PromptLayer team thinks about LLM operations. PromptLayer helps teams track prompts, compare outputs, and build evaluation workflows so product decisions are grounded in evidence, not guesswork.

Ready to try it yourself? Sign up for PromptLayer and start managing your prompts in minutes.