Snorkel AI triples valuation to $3.5B as demand for AI training data booms

Snorkel AI, a startup that helps AI labs and corporations build training datasets and simulated environments, has raised a $350 million Series E at a $3.5 billion valuation. The new round, led by Insight Partners and S32, valued the seven-year-old startup at nearly triple the $1.3 billion valuation it garnered when it raised $100 million in a Series D 17 months ago. Existing investors including Addition, Lightspeed, Greylock, GV, and Wells Fargo also participated. While Snorkel originally provided software for data-labeling automation, it shifted last year to providing customers with completed datasets, an offering it calls data-as-a-service. Rather than operating purely as a human expert marketplace, Snorkel relies on a hybrid approach, using its software and models to generate data synthetically alongside subject matter experts. Snorkel says its current annualized revenue run rate now stands at $375 million, an eighteenfold increase over the last 12 months, fueled by AI labs' insatiable appetite for high-end training data. Given that Snorkel sells reinforcement learning environments and complete datasets rather than human labor, payments to its human experts are accounted for in its cost of goods sold rather than headline-generating annualized revenue numbers, according to the company. Snorkel launched commercially in 2019 following four years of research by co-founder and CEO Alex Ratner.