micro1 company profile: valuation, funding & revenue

This micro1 company profile covers the company's valuation, revenue, funding rounds, investors and history. micro1 works in artificial intelligence, with a focus on expert human data for AI training. It was founded in 2022 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. Its latest valuation on record is About US$4 billion (reported) (September 2026). Every figure links to a public source, and anything the company hasn't disclosed is marked as such.

Revenue

Funding history

micro1 timeline

Key dates from the sources on this page, oldest first. Metric snapshots are listed after the funding events.

• 2022 — micro1 is founded in San Francisco by Ali Ansari (CEO).
• Sep 2025 — Series A: US$35M, valuing the company at About US$500M.
• Sep 2026 (reported) — Growth round: More than US$100M, valuing the company at About US$4B (reported). Investors: Two frontier AI labs and two xAI co-founders among participants (reported).
• September 2025 — Previous valuation: About US$500 million.
• 2025–2026 — Revenue (reported): Crossed US$100 million annualised by December 2025; later reports cite much higher run rates.

Investors

micro1 began as an AI-powered recruiting company and pivoted into one of the hottest markets in AI: supplying expert human data to train AI models. Its AI interviewer screens engineers, doctors, lawyers and other specialists who then create and grade training data for AI labs. Forbes reported in September 2026 that it had raised more than US$100 million at a US$4 billion valuation, eight times its value a year earlier. This profile explains micro1's business, funding and the competitive market for AI training data.

micro1's valuation

According to Forbes, micro1 raised more than US$100 million at about US$4 billion in a round reported in late September 2026, citing two people familiar with the deal; the company declined to comment. Participants reportedly included two frontier AI labs and two of xAI's co-founders. That compares with a valuation of about US$500 million in September 2025, when it raised a US$35 million Series A, according to StockAnalysis. Because the 2026 round has not been announced by micro1, we label the figure as reported.

From recruiting to AI data

micro1 started by building an AI interviewer, which conducts video interviews, assesses technical skills and ranks candidates, to help companies hire remote software engineers. That tool turned out to be valuable in a different market. AI labs need large numbers of experts, from programmers to physicians to chemists, to write examples, solve problems step by step, judge model answers and build reinforcement-learning tasks. Finding and vetting those experts quickly is a recruiting problem, and micro1 already had the technology.

The company now recruits experts at scale through its AI interviewer, assigns them to data projects for AI labs and enterprises, and manages quality, payments and workflows. Its revenue comes mainly from what customers pay for that expert work, a model sometimes described as human data or "data as a service".

Revenue and growth

Forbes reported that micro1 crossed US$100 million in annualised revenue by December 2025. A summary of the same reporting on Digg cited a figure of more than US$500 million by September 2026, while other coverage described a US$500 million gross annual run rate earlier in the summer. The measures differ, gross bookings versus revenue for example, so treat these figures as indications of very fast growth rather than precise numbers.

Founder

Ali Ansari, the chief executive, founded micro1 in 2022 and was 25 at the time of the 2026 round, according to Forbes. He built micro1 around the idea that AI could make hiring faster and fairer.

Why expert data is in demand

As AI models became better at general tasks, improving them further required harder, more specialised training data: expert-level coding problems, medical reasoning, legal analysis and realistic tasks for AI agents. Synthetic data generated by AI helps, but labs still pay for human experts to create and check high-quality examples. That demand has made data suppliers some of the fastest-growing companies in AI, including Mercor, Surge AI, Scale AI, Turing, Handshake and Snorkel AI. See our AI training data companies guide.

Competitive landscape

micro1's closest competitor is Mercor, which also started in AI recruiting and pivoted to expert data and has raised at a much higher valuation. Others include Surge AI, Scale AI, Turing and Invisible Technologies. Competition centres on how fast companies can supply qualified experts, the quality of the resulting data and price. Labs often use several suppliers at once and can shift work quickly.

Risks

• Customer concentration: a few AI labs account for most spending on expert data.
• Shifting demand: labs could build in-house teams or rely more on synthetic data.
• Worker relations: contractors' pay, classification and treatment are scrutinised across the industry.
• Valuation: an eightfold jump in a year assumes continued hypergrowth.

Questions to ask

• What is micro1's net revenue, as opposed to gross bookings?
• How many experts are active on the platform, and how are they paid?
• How dependent is it on its largest customers?
• Is the business profitable?

Timeline in brief

• 2022: founded by Ali Ansari as an AI recruiting company.
• 2024–2025: pivots to supplying expert data for AI labs.
• September 2025: US$35 million Series A at about US$500 million.
• December 2025: passes US$100 million annualised revenue (reported).
• September 2026: reported US$100 million-plus round at about US$4 billion.

micro1 at a glance

micro1 is a San Francisco AI company founded in 2022 by Ali Ansari. It uses an AI interviewer to recruit and vet experts who create training data for AI labs and enterprises. It raised a US$35 million Series A at about US$500 million in September 2025 and was reported by Forbes in September 2026 to have raised more than US$100 million at about US$4 billion, with frontier AI labs among the investors.

How micro1's AI interviewer works

Candidates apply through micro1's platform and complete an interview with its AI interviewer, which asks questions, evaluates answers, tests technical or domain knowledge and assesses communication. The system then ranks candidates and passes the strongest to customers or to micro1's own data projects. That allows micro1 to screen thousands of experts quickly across many countries and fields, something that would take a large team of human recruiters.

Once accepted, experts work on tasks such as writing difficult problems and model answers, evaluating AI outputs, red-teaming models for safety and building realistic tasks for AI agents. They are typically paid per hour or per task, and micro1 earns the difference between what customers pay and what it pays experts, plus fees for managing quality and workflows.

Valuation context

micro1's reported US$4 billion valuation places it among the larger AI data companies, though below Mercor and Surge AI. Valuations in this sector have risen quickly because AI labs' spending on human data has grown, but they also depend heavily on a handful of customers. The key question for investors is how much of that spending is durable as labs mature and synthetic data improves.

What to watch

Watch for an official funding announcement, revenue disclosures, new enterprise customers beyond AI labs and competition with Mercor.

Takeaways

micro1 turned a recruiting tool into a fast-growing AI data business. Its reported valuation reflects how much AI labs are spending on human expertise, and how quickly that spending could shift.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from the public sources below. Where sources disagreed, we used the company's own announcement or a primary news report. Private-company data changes; check the date beside each figure.

1. Forbes
2. StockAnalysis