Trajectory raises $45M to make AI model training accessible to nontechnical experts

Trajectory, a startup founded by three Stanford classmates with experience at Google DeepMind and Apple, has raised $45 million in a Series A round to make AI model training accessible to non-technical experts. The company, with 18 employees, aims to automate the process of fine-tuning general AI models for specialized tasks, such as law and finance.

This typically requires hiring internal research teams or relying on expensive consultants. Trajectory's approach, known as continual learning, allows businesses to start with an open-source AI model and connect the platform to their applications, collecting feedback on how the model performs. Trajectory then uses this information to retrain the model, helping it improve at specialized tasks over time.

The startup's co-founder, Ronak Malde, explained that businesses can improve specialized AI models using Trajectory, making the deployment process faster and cheaper. Trajectory's customers include Harvey, Rogo, Decagon, Mercor, and Nvidia. The company is now making its post-training platform publicly available. By keeping humans involved in the training process, Trajectory's approach is considered safer than recursive self-improvement, where AI systems improve their own capabilities.

Trajectory's team, boasting former researchers from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Stripe, and Netflix, believes the startup's biggest advantage is its interface, which makes post-training more accessible to its non-technical customers.