Snorkel AI has secured $350 million in a Series E funding round, bringing the company's valuation to $3.5 billion. The investment was led by Insight Partners and S32, with participation from existing backers including Addition, Lightspeed, Greylock, GV, and Wells Fargo. This valuation marks a significant increase from the $1.3 billion figure recorded 17 months ago during the company's Series D round.
The startup, founded seven years ago, initially focused on software for automating data labeling. Last year, the company transitioned to a data-as-a-service model, providing clients with complete datasets and reinforcement learning environments. This approach combines proprietary software and models with input from subject matter experts to generate synthetic data.
Snorkel AI reports an annualized revenue run-rate of $375 million, representing an 18-fold increase over the past year. The company distinguishes its financial reporting from other industry players, noting that payments to human experts are classified as cost of goods sold rather than being included in its top-line revenue figures.
The company originated from four years of research at a Stanford AI lab, led by co-founder and CEO Alex Ratner, before launching commercially in 2019. The current growth in the sector is driven by high demand from AI laboratories for specialized training data, a trend also observed in other data-focused startups within the artificial intelligence ecosystem.
