- AfterQuery’s valuation has reportedly jumped from $300M to $3.2B in 5 months
- Founders Spencer Mateega and Carlos Georgescu joined YC simply 18 months in the past
- AfterQuery’s income reportedly grew from $100M to tons of of tens of millions since April
AfterQuery has reportedly raised a Collection B at a $3.2 billion valuation, in keeping with Forbes, one of many quickest valuation jumps the AI startup market has seen this 12 months.
The San Francisco-based startup was valued at $300 million when it announced a $30 million Series A in April. 5 months later, the brand new determine is greater than a tenfold enhance and, in keeping with Y Combinator accomplice Gustaf Alströmer, the quickest run from launch to unicorn standing within the accelerator’s historical past.
AfterQuery is reportedly worthwhile and has already lined up a lead investor for the spherical, although the corporate declined to remark.
From YC cohort to $3.2 billion startup
Spencer Mateega and Carlos Georgescu, highschool associates who based AfterQuery in 2025 and joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch, had been 23 and 22, respectively, when the brand new valuation was reported.
The corporate didn’t got down to construct an information enterprise. Mateega and Georgescu first tried constructing AI brokers for monetary workflows, then discovered that current fashions saved failing on complicated, nuanced skilled duties — not as a result of the fashions couldn’t motive, however as a result of they’d by no means been skilled on how professionals truly work. That perception led to the pivot.
AfterQuery now pays consultants throughout software program engineering, finance, regulation, and drugs to seize how they motive by means of issues, then turns that into datasets and reinforcement-learning environments AI labs can prepare on.
Why AI labs are paying for human experience
Early AI programs realized a lot from public net knowledge. That effectively is working dry: as frontier fashions exhaust what’s freely accessible on-line, labs are turning to costlier, domain-specific knowledge that exhibits how expert professionals truly clear up exhausting issues.
AfterQuery’s clients reportedly embrace Nvidia, authorized AI firm Legora, and Korean AI lab Motif Applied sciences, and its knowledge has been utilized in Nvidia’s Nemotron fashions. The corporate has additionally labored with Considering Machines Lab, the startup based by former OpenAI chief know-how officer Mira Murati.
The corporate mentioned it had crossed $100 million in annualised income when it raised its Collection A in April. Mateega posted on X in July that the determine had grown to “tons of of tens of millions” — and mentioned the corporate runs its personal inside post-training pipeline, coaching fashions on its knowledge first so labs can see proof of high quality earlier than they consider it themselves.
A crowded AI knowledge market
AfterQuery isn’t the primary to point out traders the worth of human experience right here.
Mercor, which Tech Funding Information reported raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation in October 2025, has since gone on to seek a valuation near $20 billion. Deccan AI, which provides post-training knowledge and analysis work by means of a community of consultants, raised $25 million in a Collection A in March.
For AfterQuery, the scale of this spherical suggests traders suppose professional reasoning knowledge is changing into greater than a supporting layer for AI improvement. As fashions push deeper into skilled work, instructing them how consultants truly suppose might become one of many extra helpful, and costliest, items of the AI stack.
