Key facts
- AI training data startup AfterQuery has reportedly achieved a $3.2 billion valuation.
- The company reached unicorn status in 18 months, the fastest in Y Combinator's history.
- AfterQuery employs professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and financial analysts to create specialized AI training data.
- This data focuses on expert judgment and reasoning, addressing a scarcity of such information.
- Nvidia has utilized AfterQuery's data for its Nemotron models.
- Founders Spencer Mateega and Carlos Georgescu are 23 and 22 years old, respectively.
AfterQuery, an AI startup specializing in generating expert judgment data, has reportedly achieved a $3.2 billion valuation, making it the fastest company in Y Combinator's history to reach unicorn status. Founded 18 months ago by Spencer Mateega, 23, and Carlos Georgescu, 22, the company pays professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and financial analysts to create data that teaches AI models how to make complex decisions.
This specialized data is in high demand as leading AI labs have exhausted readily available text on the open internet, and synthetic data has limitations. Nvidia has utilized AfterQuery's data to train its open-source Nemotron models. The company's annual recurring revenue had grown to the hundreds of millions by July 2026, up from $100 million in April.
AfterQuery's competitive edge includes custom software for screening data submissions and training its own models on the data before selling it to demonstrate effectiveness. This rapid growth contrasts with competitors like Mercor, which uses an AI interviewer for its contractor pool.