Training data provider Snorkel AI raises $350M at $3.5B valuation

Snorkel AI Inc., a provider of artificial intelligence training data, today disclosed that it has raised $350 million in funding.

Insight and S32 led the Series E deal. They were joined by more than a half-dozen other backers including Alphabet Inc.’s GV startup fund. 

Snorkel AI was founded in 2019 by researchers from the Stanford AI Lab. Its first product was Snorkel Flow, a software platform that reduced the amount of work involved in supervised learning projects. Supervised learning is an AI development method that trains neural networks using labeled datasets. Such files comprise prompts and correct, human-generated answers to those prompts.

Creating labeled datasets is a highly time-consuming process. Snorkel Flow automated the process using statistical methods developed by the company’s founders at Stanford. According to Snorkel AI, those methods addressed the accuracy issues that made earlier automation approaches ineffective.

Last year, the company changed its business model. It pivoted from selling software that helps developers create training data to providing ready-to-use training datasets. Additionally, Snorkel AI expanded its focus beyond supervised learning to a second, more complex AI training approach known as reinforcement learning.