Handshake
San Francisco company that began as the largest US college career network.
About
San Francisco company that began as the largest US college career network. In January 2025 it launched Handshake AI, turning its student and expert network into a supplier of expert training, evaluation and RLHF data to frontier AI labs; acquired Cleanlab in January 2026 to expand into evaluations and RL environments.
Full tier & rationale — an SVTR Intelligence benefit
Capital graph
Company· 12
Investor· 10
Founders / team· 3
Funding history
- 2022-01-19Series F$200M
Investors · Coatue, Valiant Peregrine Fund, Base10 Partners, Spark Capital, Lightspeed, True Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, EQT Ventures, GGV, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Emerson Collective, Reach CapitalSource · joinhandshake.co.uk ↗
Comparable companies· by market
This company
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- Handshake
Provides expert-level human data (annotation, evaluation…
Series D+ · $435M · 2022-01
$435M
United States
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- Micro1
Human expert annotation, reinforcement learning evaluation and robot training data for frontier AI labs
Undisclosed · $71M · 2025-09 · Valuation $500M
$71MValuation $500M - Turing
Provides engineering talent and training data to model labs
Series E · $225M · 2025-03
$225M - Surge AI
Human annotation and evaluation data for frontier model labs
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China
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- MolarData
AI Power data annotation platform processing image, point cloud, 4D and RLHF training data for automakers and universities
Series A · $7M · 2024-08
$7M - Kaiwang Data
End-to-end AI data infrastructure: automated data production line (automation plus human labor at scale) covering data definition, scenario collection…
Strategic · $21M · 2026-08
$21M - 觅蜂科技
One-stop physical AI (embodied AI) data services platform covering data collection, automated curation and closed-loop evaluation and iteration
Strategic · 2026-08
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Europe
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- BeatpulseLabs
Converts multimedia content and domain expert knowledge into structured, labeled and validated training datasets for enterprise AI teams…
Pre-Seed · $2M · 2026-06
$2M - Toloka
Human workforce that reviews, labels or corrects data AI cannot handle, to improve AI capabilities
Undisclosed · $72M · 2025-05
$72M - Perceptron
Decentralized AI data infrastructure (DePIN): AI companies order on demand on its data-questing platform, a global contributor network collects…
Strategic · $7M · 2026-07
$7M
Confirmed rounds only. Matched on subsector, sector, stage and funding scale — each verifiable on the company profiles.
Investors that may fit
Y Combinator
20 Data deals in the last 24 months · 3 at a nearby stage · 20 in Silicon Valley
Request intro →Andreessen Horowitz
13 Data deals in the last 24 months · 5 at a nearby stage · 13 in Silicon Valley
Request intro →Peak XV Partners
9 Data deals in the last 24 months · 1 at a nearby stage · 7 in Silicon Valley
Request intro →Sequoia Capital
8 Data deals in the last 24 months · 2 at a nearby stage · 7 in Silicon Valley
Request intro →Ranked by each firm’s deals in this sector over the last 24 months, weighted by nearby stage and shared geography. Indicative only — no rating judgment.