AfterQuery is a San Francisco applied-research lab and expert-data company (YC W25). It supplies AI labs with expert-generated SFT and RL data, rubrics, agent environments and computer-use trajectories, drawn from a stated network of nearly 100,000 verified professionals. Forbes reported it was raising at a $3.2B valuation in Sept 2026. NVIDIA's Nemotron 3 Ultra report names AfterQuery tasks in its GDPval training recipe. The company publishes or co-builds real-task benchmarks (FinanceQA, VADER, IDE-Bench, SpreadsheetBench 2, Legora BAR) and is adding forward-deployed enterprise work.
Raised
$30.5M ↑ $30M
Headcount
51-200
Founded
2025
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
partial
Backers: Altos Ventures (lead, Series A), The Raine Group, Y Combinator
Huzzle Labs is the applied-AI division of the London talent platform Huzzle (co-founders Ingmar Klein, CEO, and Amit Choudhary, CTO). It builds long-horizon RL environments (coding, computer use, enterprise workflows) and expert trajectory data for frontier labs, drawing on Huzzle's talent network, which it says numbers 300k+. In 2026 it expanded into its own small computer-use models (HuzzleWorld, 1B-8B, self-reported results), a domain benchmark (InsureBench, scores pending), and enterprise custom evals and models deployed on client infrastructure.
Raised
$6M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2020
SOC 2
Type II
Researchers
yes
Open src
partial
Backers: 10x Founders, Angel Invest, Emerge
Fleet AI builds high-fidelity reinforcement-learning training environments ('gyms') that replicate enterprise software such as Salesforce and Excel, plus browser/desktop workflows, so frontier AI labs and large enterprises can train and evaluate computer-use agents. It ships a Python SDK, a platform API, and the open-source 'Harbor' agent-evaluation/RL-environment tooling, pairing simulated environments with human supervision.
Raised
$15M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2024
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
partial
Backers: Sequoia Capital, Menlo Ventures, SV Angel
HUD (Human Union Data, YC W25, formerly hud.so) calls itself the platform for building high-quality post-training datasets. It offers an MIT-licensed SDK for defining RL environments, tasks and graders across coding, browser, computer-use and robotics; a hosted training and eval platform; and DataVendor, a marketplace where independent builders sell RL environments and data to AI labs. It announced a $16M Series A led by Standard Capital in June 2026.
Raised
$16M ↑ $16M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2025
SOC 2
claimed
Researchers
yes
Open src
yes
Backers: Standard Capital (Series A lead), Y Combinator (W25), Exceptional Capital
Halluminate (YC S25, founded 2024, San Francisco) calls itself a data research lab building benchmarks and RL environments for knowledge work, starting with financial services (PE, IB, due diligence) and consulting. It raised a $30M Series A led by Oak HC/FT in October 2026 ($38.5M total). With about nine people, it says it works with four of the five leading closed-source US AI labs and has a mid-eight-figure revenue run rate (self-reported). Its flagship benchmark is Westworld Finance Diligence Bench.
Raised
$38.5M ↑ $30M
Headcount
1-10
Founded
2024
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
yes
Backers: Oak HC/FT (Series A lead), Y Combinator (S25), Orange Collective
Collinear AI runs a Simulation Lab of sandboxed, stateful environments with simulated users (NPCs), tools, tasks and verifiers for agent RL training and evaluation. It now positions itself mainly as a supplier of training data, environments and evals to frontier labs across cybersecurity, software engineering, computer use and complex agent behaviour. Its CWE-bench defensive-cyber benchmark is part of the Artificial Analysis Cyber Index.
Raised
$10M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2023
SOC 2
Type I
Researchers
yes
Open src
partial
Backers: Engineering Capital, 112 Capital (11.2 Capital), B Capital
Chakra Labs ('Frontier Data Laboratory') builds deterministic clones of enterprise and productivity software that expose both GUI and MCP surfaces, along with verifiable task sets and crowdsourced trajectory data for training and evaluating computer-use and tool-use agents. It delivers them through its Dojo hub with Harbor, Verifiers and Verl support. In 2026 its messaging centred on task quality (difficult, realistic, reliably verifiable, hard to hack), and it published MAGI, a 1,000-task mixed GUI and MCP benchmark on which it reports frontier models below 30% pass@1.
Raised
$10.06M ↑ $10.1M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2024
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
yes
Pedigree: Nirmal Krishnan (co-founder and CEO per the SEC Form D signature): Joh
Andon Labs (YC W24, formerly Vectorview) builds long-horizon agent benchmarks (Vending-Bench, Blueprint-Bench, Drone-Bench, Butter-Bench) and runs real AI-operated businesses (Andon Market in SF, Andon Café in Stockholm, Andon FM, vending machines) as live safety testbeds. In September 2026 it launched Pion, a research-preview platform for agents that run whole businesses. It is a repeat Anthropic research partner (Project Vend, and Project Pilot with the Frontier Red Team).
Raised
–
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2023
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
?
Backers: Y Combinator (W24)
BenchFlow is a small, open-source-first 'frontier environment lab' in the Bay Area. It publishes agent benchmarks and environments: SkillsBench and ClawsBench, the env0 simulated workspaces, Robo Use and GenesisBench for embodied agents, and FrontierPhysics. It runs the PostTrain Arena for community-contributed post-training environments and maintains an Apache-2.0 runtime for RL environments, post-training and evals. It has event-level ties to Google DeepMind, Kaggle, Anthropic, Hugging Face and Prime Intellect.
Raised
–
Headcount
1-10
Founded
2024
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
yes
Backers: Founders, Inc. (confirmed via its portfolio page), Y Combinator (reported by aggregator only; no YC directory page found), Pear VC (reported)
Refresh (YC X25; appears to have grown out of Operative.sh) builds RL environments with verifiable rewards for coding, computer use (high-fidelity clones of software suites such as EHRs and enterprise apps) and 3D animation and simulation in Blender. Data ships in Harbor format. Public releases include BlenderBench, the Gauntlet 4K RLVR dataset (access by request), the open-source computer-1 harness in Harbor, and the trajectories.sh trajectory-sharing platform.
Raised
–
Headcount
1-10
Founded
2025
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
partial
Backers: Y Combinator
Matrices builds reinforcement-learning training environments for frontier AI labs to train agents that use computers and browsers like humans, described as a 'gamified replica of the internet' where thousands of agents learn via RL. The company frames its mission as 'towards self-driving computers' and says it helps labs train computer-use agents (Operator-class systems). Note: this is the correct browser-native entity (matrices.ai / LinkedIn 'matricesapp'), distinct from the similarly named 'Matrice.ai' computer-vision company and 'Matrix AI Network' blockchain project.
Raised
$5M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2023
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
?
Open src
no
Backers: AI Grant (Batch 3; confirmed on aigrant.com), Index Ventures (reported), Naval Ravikant (reported, single source)
Plato (plato.so, Plato Technologies, Inc.) builds simulated worlds for training and evaluating browser and computer-use agents, recreating real websites/software (e.g. Amazon/Airbnb/Gmail-style replicas) as reinforcement-learning environments with structured APIs for interaction, state tracking and scoring. It also offers a 'Computer Use' capability driving a full Linux desktop, positioning at the intersection of browser interaction and enterprise workflow simulation.
Raised
–
Headcount
1-10
Founded
2025
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
partial
Pedigree: Pranav Putta (Co-founder/CTO), prior MultiOn, Georgia Institute of Te
Habitat Inc is a very early-stage San Francisco company (2-10 employees). Third-party market maps (Chemistry VC, SemiAnalysis, AlignList) list it as building reinforcement-learning environments for code and computer-use agent workflows, made of programmatically verifiable problems. Until mid-2026 its own LinkedIn described it as 'RL environments for white-collar work'. By October 2026 that tagline read 'Autonomous firms.', which may signal a repositioning. It has disclosed no funding, customers, publications or security certifications, and its website is a placeholder.
Raised
–
Headcount
1-10
Founded
?
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
?
Open src
no
Pedigree: Maxim Enis (co-founder), Williams College '24; prior Ramp association
Scale AI is the data-labeling and AI-data incumbent that has extended into RL environments (simulated web apps, macOS/Windows-like desktop VMs and MCP-tool environments with expert rubrics and automated verifiers). It runs a large public evaluation program through Scale Labs (SWE-Bench Pro, MCP Atlas, Humanity's Last Exam, Remote Labor Index). After Meta's ~$14.3B deal in June 2025 (~49% non-voting stake) and Alexandr Wang's move to Meta, several frontier labs reportedly scaled back work. In 2026 Scale grew mainly in government and enterprise: the Pentagon CDAO agreement ceiling rose to $500M, it acquired ICG Solutions, and Francis deSouza (ex-Google Cloud COO) became CEO in August 2026.
Raised
$1.6B
Headcount
200+
Founded
2016
SOC 2
Type II
Researchers
yes
Open src
no
Backers: Meta Platforms, Accel, Amazon
Snorkel AI is a San Francisco company spun out of the Stanford AI Lab in 2019 and known for the Snorkel weak-supervision project. It now calls itself 'the frontier AI data lab'. In 2025 it moved from selling Snorkel Flow software to an expert Data-as-a-Service model, and it now supplies expert agentic tasks, RL environments (computer-use, terminal and simulated-enterprise), rubrics and evals to AI labs and enterprises. It combines expert contributors with synthetic generation and agent-based QC, maintains Terminal-Bench, and co-authors or hosts agent benchmarks such as OSWorld 2.0, Agents' Last Exam and Senior SWE-bench through a $3M Open Benchmarks Grants program. It raised a $350M Series E at $3.5B in September 2026 and says its ARR passed $375M.
Raised
$585M ↑ $350M
Headcount
201-500
Founded
2019
SOC 2
Type II
Researchers
yes
Open src
partial
Backers: Insight Partners (co-led Series E), S32 (co-led Series E), Addition (led Series D, co-led Series C)
Daytona provides secure, elastic, programmatic sandboxes (Linux containers, Linux and Windows VMs, and GPU sandboxes) that AI agents spin up in under ~90ms (vendor claim) to run untrusted AI-generated code in isolated, stateful runtimes with snapshot and fork primitives. It is a managed service with a Bring-Your-Own-Compute option and has been closed source since June 2026. It is an integrated sandbox provider for Anthropic Claude Managed Agents, OpenAI Agents SDK Sandbox Agents and Cognition Devin Outposts, and targets code execution, computer use and RL/eval rollouts.
Raised
$79M ↑ $48.274M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2023
SOC 2
Type II
Researchers
yes
Open src
no
Backers: FirstMark Capital (Series A lead; Matt Turck on board and listed as a director on the Aug 2026 Form D), Pace Capital, Upfront Ventures (seed lead, Series A participant)
Deeptune was a New York-based startup building managed reinforcement-learning environments ('training gyms') for computer-use and code, where AI agents practice and are evaluated on realistic digital knowledge-work tasks (simulating tools like Slack and Salesforce). It sold these pre-built environments primarily to frontier AI labs and raised a $43M Series A led by a16z (March 2026). In July 2026 it was acquired by Mercor; the team joined Mercor and Deeptune's environment platform now sits under Mercor. It is therefore no longer ranked as an independent vendor.
Raised
$43M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2025
SOC 2
unknown
Researchers
yes
Open src
no
Backers: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z, lead), 776, Abstract Ventures
E2B provides open-source Firecracker-microVM sandboxes for AI agents. It is offered as a hosted API, as BYOC, and since September 2026 as a self-hostable single-node package (E2B Embed). In 2026 it became a supported sandbox provider in the OpenAI Agents SDK and published integrations for Devin Outposts and Cursor Self-Hosted Machines. Vendor case studies show it used for RL rollouts (Paper Instruments) and large-scale evals (Arena).
Raised
$32M
Headcount
11-50
Founded
2023
SOC 2
Type II
Researchers
no
Open src
yes
Backers: Insight Partners (Series A lead), Decibel (seed lead), Sunflower Capital
Cua (trycua, YC X25) builds open-core 'computer-use 2.0' infrastructure: an MIT, agent-neutral background driver for macOS, Windows and Linux (CLI/MCP), local and cloud sandboxes, elastic Cua Fleets for parallel eval and RL training (cloud, BYOC, on-prem), Lume macOS virtualization, the Cua Spaces Mac app, small CUA-S1 decision models, and Cua-Bench for verifiable tasks, leaderboards and RL trajectory export. SOC 2 Type I.
Raised
$500K
Headcount
1-10
Founded
2025
SOC 2
Type II
Researchers
yes
Open src
yes
Backers: Y Combinator (X25 batch)