AI tagging startup Handshake has acquired data tagging startup Cleanlab, the companies tell TechCrunch.
Handshake started in 2013 as a platform for recruiting college graduates and started a human data tagging business about a year ago to serve fundamental AI modeling companies. Founded in 2021, Cleanlab is a startup that provides software to improve the quality of data generated by human tags.
The deal is primarily a talent acquisition, also known as an acquisition, adding nine key Cleanlab employees to Handshake’s research organization. That includes the startup’s co-founders, who earned their PhDs in computer science from MIT: Curtis Northcutt (pictured above), Jonas Mueller and Anish Athalye. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed (although, as we previously reported, sometimes an acquisition can be surprisingly lucrative for founders.)
Cleanlab has raised a total of $30 million from investors including Menlo Ventures, TQ Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Databricks Ventures. At its peak, the startup had more than 30 employees.
Cleanlab researchers are experts in developing algorithms that flag erroneous data without a second human judge. The goal is to improve the quality of the data that Handshake produces for AI labs.
“We have an internal research team that thinks a lot about where our models are weak, what data do we need to produce? How high quality is that data?” Sahil Bhaiwala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Handshake told TechCrunch. “The Cleanlab team has been focused on this problem for years.”
Northcutt, the Cleanlab CEO credited with pioneering automated data tagging, said the company has received acquisition interest from other AI data tagging companies. But the startup chose to sell to Handshake because, it said, data labeling competitors including Mercor, Surge and Scale AI often use Handshake’s platform to source human experts such as doctors, lawyers and scientists for their data labeling projects.
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“If you’re going to pick one, you should probably pick the source, not the middleman,” Northcutt told TechCrunch.
Handshake, which was last valued at $3.3 billion in 2022, was projected to end 2025 at $300 million in annualized revenue (ARR) and is according to information on track to reach “high hundreds of millions” of ARR this year. The company has provided data for eight leading AI labs, including OpenAI.
