AI training-data startup AfterQuery has reportedly closed a funding round that values the company at $3.2 billion. That represents more than a tenfold increase in value just five months after the company announced a $30 million Series A at a $300 million valuation in April.
Fastest path to unicorn in Y Combinator history, YC says
According to Gustaf Alströmer, a partner at Y Combinator, this is the fastest a startup in the accelerator’s history has moved from launch to unicorn status. AfterQuery’s founders are 22 and 23 years old and were part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 cohort roughly 18 months ago.
Revenue run rate and customers
In April, AfterQuery reported an annualized revenue run rate of $100 million and said it was working with many of the largest labs. The company has named customers including Nvidia, Legora and the Korean AI lab Motif Technologies.
Training approach: encoding professional decision-making
AfterQuery is part of a wave of startups—alongside companies like Mercor and Scale—that hire knowledge professionals such as doctors and lawyers to help train models. Rather than focusing solely on ensuring models produce correct answers, AfterQuery trains models and agents to perform tasks in the way professionals would, which the company describes as “encoding the patterns, decisions, and reasoning of the world’s best practitioners.”
Reporting and response
Forbes was the first outlet to report the round. AfterQuery could not be immediately reached for comment.
