AfterQuery, an AI training-data startup, has reportedly raised a round valuing it at $3.2-billion, roughly R52-billion.
In April it announced a $30-million Series A at a $300-million valuation. That is more than a tenfold increase in five months, and Y Combinator partner Gustaf Alströmer says it is the fastest any startup has gone from launch to unicorn in the accelerator's history. The founders are 22 and 23.
Interesting insights on AfterQuery valuation
What the company sells matters more than the multiple. AfterQuery employs knowledge professionals, doctors, lawyers and other specialists to train AI models. Where earlier data-labelling businesses focused on getting answers right, AfterQuery works on how professionals actually complete tasks, describing it as encoding the patterns, decisions and reasoning of the best practitioners.
Customers named publicly include Nvidia, Legora and Korean lab Motif Technologies. In April, the company said it had reached an annualised revenue run rate of $100-million, about R1.6-billion, which puts the new valuation at roughly 32 times that figure.
The founders went through Y Combinator's Winter 2025 cohort 18 months ago. It sits alongside Mercor and Scale in a category that has grown quickly because frontier labs have run short of the kind of expert data they need. Two things to hold: Forbes reported the round, and AfterQuery has not confirmed it, and the run rate figure is five months old.
What others are saying about AfterQuery valuation
TechCrunch reported the round and noted AfterQuery could not immediately be reached for comment. Forbes broke the story and carried Alströmer's comment on the speed. AfterQuery's own blog set out the $100-million run rate and its argument that the value now lies in expert reasoning rather than volume labelling.
The work becomes the training data
Read the business model rather than the valuation. AfterQuery pays qualified professionals to demonstrate how they do their jobs, then sells that to AI labs. It is the mirror image of what we covered when Cognition reached $40bn selling agents that do the grunt work, and of the automation pressure hanging over the SA BPO sector.
In one direction, the work disappears. In the other, the record of how it was done becomes the asset. Companies in this category recruit contributors internationally, and South Africa has the professional depth, English and cost base to be attractive for it.
Whether local doctors, lawyers and accountants are actually being hired at any scale is not documented anywhere I can find, which makes it a question worth asking rather than an opportunity to announce.
You might also like our piece on why developer career frameworks break when AI takes the junior work, Anvaya's seed funding for AI in a regulated profession, and how SA enterprise AI adoption keeps outrunning its own strategy.
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