Micro1, a Scale AI competitor, touts crossing $100M ARR

Micro1, a three-year-old startup specializing in recruiting and managing human experts to generate training data for AI labs, has experienced rapid growth, surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) from about $7 million at the start of the year. Founded by 24-year-old Ali Ansari, Micro1 serves leading AI labs including Microsoft and Fortune 100 companies focused on improving large language models through post-training and reinforcement learning. The company’s growth is fueled by increasing demand for high-quality human data, a market Ansari projects will expand from $10-15 billion today to nearly $100 billion within two years. While Micro1’s ARR growth is impressive, it remains smaller than competitors Mercor ($450 million ARR) and Surge ($1.2 billion ARR in 2024). Micro1’s success is attributed to its efficient recruitment and evaluation of domain experts, leveraging a platform that evolved from an AI recruiting tool called Zara. Beyond servicing elite AI labs, Micro1 is targeting two