Snorkel AI Valuation Hits $3.5 Billion Amid Training Data Surge
AI-generated image · US National Wire
A $350 million Series E round signals a shift toward high-quality data infrastructure as AI labs seek scalable training sets.
Snorkel AI has raised $350 million in a Series E funding round, bringing the startup's valuation to $3.5 billion, as TechCrunch first reported. This represents nearly triple the $1.3 billion valuation the company held 17 months ago during its $100 million Series D.
The round was led by Insight Partners and S32, with participation from existing investors GV, Greylock, Lightspeed, Addition, and Wells Fargo. Co-founder and CEO Alex Ratner launched the company commercially in 2019 after conducting research at a Stanford AI lab.
Snorkel has pivoted from providing data labeling automation software to a "data-as-a-service" model, delivering completed datasets and reinforcement learning (RL) environments to corporate clients and AI labs. The company utilizes a hybrid approach that combines subject matter experts with synthetic data generated by its own models.
This shift coincides with a broader growth trend among AI data labs. TechCrunch reports that Mercor has reached $2 billion in gross annualized revenue, Handshake has hit $1 billion, and Micro1 has scaled to $500 million. Unlike these competitors, who pay 60% to 70% of top-line income to domain specialists, Snorkel accounts for human expert payments within its cost of goods sold.
Snorkel reports its current annualized revenue run-rate is $375 million, marking an 18-fold increase over the previous 12 months.