San Francisco startup Halluminate raises a $30 million Series A led by Oak HC/FT to build AI training environments for financial work, bringing its total funding to $38.5 million. Its benchmarks identify failures in complex workflows; an acquisition due-diligence test of seven frontier models records a highest average score of 51% across 88 tasks. CEO Jerry Wu says four of the top five closed-source U.S. AI labs are paying customers and the company is profitable, with annualized revenue run rate in the mid-eight figures.
AI training startup Mercor is reportedly in early-stage talks to raise funding at a $20 billion valuation, and has told investors it received a term sheet at that price. The valuation would double its $10 billion value from its $350 million Series C in October 2025; founder and CEO Brendan Foody says annualized revenue run rate has crossed $2 billion. Mercor also announces it will acquire AI-agent training company Deeptune, whose entire team will join Mercor.
