Company · AI & Data

Argilla

argilla.io ↗ ·Madrid ·Seed

Argilla built an open-source, data-centric platform for labeling, curating, and improving NLP and LLM training/evaluation datasets (formerly known as Recognai/Rubrix). Founded in Madrid in 2017, the company raised a seed round before being acquired by Hugging Face in June 2024 for roughly $10M, with the full team joining Hugging Face; Argilla and its Distilabel tool continue to operate as open-source projects within Hugging Face rather than as an independent startup.

Founded

2017

Founders

News

Rounds

Investors

SectorsAI & Data, Enterprise Software, Developer Tools Start-up MapAI & Data › AI data infrastructure

Profile updated 30 Jul 2026

Founders

Daniel Vila Suero

Co-founder & CEO

Francisco (Paco) Aranda

Co-founder & CTO

Global models 5

Scale AI

United States · scale.com ↗

Leading VC-backed data labeling and annotation platform for AI/ML training data, the largest comparable to Argilla's data-centric NLP labeling model.

$1.6BComparable

Snorkel AI

United States · snorkel.ai ↗

Programmatic data labeling and evaluation platform for building and improving ML/LLM training datasets, directly comparable to Argilla's dataset-curation focus.

$235MComparable

Labelbox

United States · labelbox.com ↗

Data labeling and training-data platform for AI teams, same core business model of tooling for dataset annotation and quality control.

$189MComparable

Surge AI

United States · surgehq.ai ↗

Human-in-the-loop data labeling and RLHF platform for LLMs, same model as Argilla though largely self-funded rather than VC-backed.

$1.2M (bootstrapped/self-funded, minimal disclosed VC)Comparable

Encord

United Kingdom · encord.com ↗

Data-centric AI platform for annotating, curating, and validating training datasets, closely mirroring Argilla's product category.

$50MComparable

Investors 5

Amplify Partners

amplifypartners.com ↗

Investor United States

Caixa Capital Risc

www.caixacapitalrisc.es

Investor Spain

Eniac Ventures

eniac.vc ↗

Investor United States

Hugging Face

huggingface.co ↗

Investor United States

Zetta Venture Partners

zetta.vc ↗

Investor United States

Funding rounds 2

Seed · $5.5M

Argilla closed a second, larger seed round of about $5.5M (Crunchbase dates it 10 November 2023; Tracxn records it as 19 October 2023 at $4.…

2023-11-10

Seed · €1.5M

Argilla, an open-source data-labelling and curation platform for natural language processing teams, raised €1.5M (about $1.6M) in a seed rou…

2023-01-25

News & media 3

Published	Article
2024-06-20	Hugging Face Acquires AI Software Startup to Boost Datasets ↗ AI Business
2023-06-20	Argilla Named to the 2023 CB Insights AI 100 List of Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Startups ↗ PR Newswire
2023-01-30	Spanish NLP Data Labeling Platform Argilla Raises USD 1.6M in Seed Funding ↗ Slator