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Trajectory raises $45 million Series A from Sequoia at $300 million valuation
TechCrunch reports Trajectory, an 18-person AI post-training startup, raised a $45 million Series A led by Sequoia at a $300 million valuation.
- New headline Was: “Trajectory raises $45 million Series A at $300 million valuation”
- Our desk updated its story
Trajectory, a year-old startup that builds tools to post-train AI models for specialized work, said it raised $45 million in Series A funding at a $300 million valuation, TechCrunch reported1.
Sequoia led the round, with participation from Nvidia, Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures, according to the report1. The company has 18 employees1.
Co-founders Ronak Malde, Michael Elabd and Arjun Karanam are Stanford classmates with prior work at Google DeepMind and Apple1. Malde was among researchers Google DeepMind acqui-hired from Windsurf, Elabd also worked at DeepMind, and Karanam worked on generative foundation models at Apple1.
TechCrunch said businesses that adapt general models for fields such as law and finance often hire research teams or consultants known as forward-deployed engineers1. Trajectory says customers can start with an open-source model, connect the platform to their applications, collect performance feedback and retrain the model over time1.
Malde told TechCrunch that foundational models resemble a smart new hire, adding, “But what the economy values is someone who worked on the job for 30 years”1. He said lawyers, doctors and other specialists can improve models nearly automatically themselves1.
Named users include Harvey and Rogo, which the report said post-train open-source models for legal and financial work, plus Decagon, Mercor and Nvidia1. The startup is making the post-training platform publicly available1.
Elabd argued that keeping humans in the training loop is safer than autonomous recursive self-improvement1. Trajectory treats Thinking Machines Lab, Applied Compute and Prime Intellect as competitors1. Karanam said the company built an interface so nontechnical customers can do post-training1.
