AI data startup AfterQuery hits $3.2B valuation, a 10x jump in five months
智东西 · wechat · 2026-09-02
- Per Forbes, AI training-data startup AfterQuery is now valued at $3.2B, up 10x from $300M five months ago; the company is profitable and has lined up a lead investor for a new round. Its annualized revenue is reportedly several times the $100M disclosed in April.
- Founded in Feb 2025 by two college students (23 and 22) in YC's W25 batch, it became a unicorn in 18 months, YC's fastest ever. After pivoting from a finance-agent idea, it supplies expert reasoning data, RL environments, and evals from a pool of 100k vetted professionals.
- Its data was used in NVIDIA's Nemotron 3 Ultra training (GDPval score 35.3→46.7), and it works with Thinking Machines Lab, legal AI firm Legora, and Chinese AI labs—reflecting the shift from basic labeling to expert-experience data, alongside peers like Mercor.
Related event: AfterQuery Becomes Fastest YC Unicorn at $3.2B Valuation(3 posts)→
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