Applied Will

some takes after chatting with ppl at data companies: - still lucrative. single deals can be millions, comp is generous, and acquisition by a frontier lab is a real exit - two main categories: cs-centric environments (coding, ml, computer use; often synthetic tasks) vs. domain-specific data (finance, legal, science; usually built with domain experts) - benchmarks are a sales tool: publish one to show expertise, build credibility, and turn attention into customers - tech isn't the main moat. what matters more is connections, sales, and trust: winning deals is much harder than producing data itself - capital is a flywheel (from @M0EGPT ): more capital -> more domain experts -> more and better data -> bigger deals -> more revenue -> reinvest in experts, infra, and research - probably not a long-term business though. labs may buy less over time, so some data companies are also starting to train their own models - the downside: much of the work seems engineering-heavy and repetitive, with limited room to grow technically

I asked people which data companies influence research direction at the frontier: 16 votes: Surge (@echen) 13 votes: Proximal (@calvinchen, @MatternJustus) 8 votes: Preference Model (@jennifgcrl, @Ning_Catsnail) 7 votes: Datacurve (@serenaa_ge, @charleyslee) 6 votes each: - Mechanize (pre-acquisition) (@tamaybes, @EgeErdil2, @MatthewJBar) - Mercor (@BrendanFoody, @adarsh_exe, @suryamidha) 5 votes: Fleet (@nicoup, @andrewthezhou) 4 votes each: - AfterQuery (@CarlosGeorgescu, @spencermateega) - Prime Intellect (@vincentweisser, @johannes_hage) 3 votes: Latch (@AlfredoAndere, @kenbwork, @kylegiff) 2 votes each: - Abundant (@huyouare, @kehuangsf, @meji_abidoye) - Artificial Analysis (@_micah_h, @grmcameron) - Bespoke Labs (@madiator, @AlexGDimakis) - micro1 (@aliansarinik) - Terminal-Bench (@Mike_A_Merrill, @alexgshaw) 50 people voted. People couldn't pick a company they work at or founded. Disclosure: on this list, I'm a small investor in Abundant, AfterQuery, Arcanum, DLR, Fleet, Latch, Paper Instruments, Snorkel, and Vmax. I didn't vote. Continued:

The market for AI training data could grow 100x over the next five years. Frontier labs need increasingly realistic data from actual businesses to train more capable models. @BrendanFoody explains why this creates a new revenue opportunity for founders and companies. Find out more at the link in the thread.