a company went from $0 to $60M in 3 months. it's still in stealth, and everyone wants to know who it is.
it's San Francisco Data. frontrun flagged @sfdata 56 days ago.
tl;dr: on october 7 2026, a16z partner Kenan Saleh posted that a company he works with went from $0 to $60M in 3 months and will hit a $100M run-rate this month, selling frontier data to ai labs. he called it the fastest growing company he's ever seen and said it was still in stealth. a day later the replies named it: San Francisco Data, founded by Brandon Guo and Faiz Siddiqi, both ex-Mercor. frontrun flagged the company on august 14 2026 at 35 followers, and had its co-founder on april 16.
the post
Kenan Saleh, an investment partner at a16z speedrun, posted the chart on october 7. 177k views and counting:
A company I work with went from $0 -> $60M in 3 months - will hit $100M run-rate this month
- Kenan Saleh (@kenanhsaleh) October 7, 2026
Fastest growing company I’ve ever seen. I don’t think people have fully grasped data as a first class citizen alongside compute and algorithms
They are selling frontier data to AI labs and model developers. DMs open if you would like to chat with them
the chart reads $0 in july, $5.58M in august, $61.2M in september. later that day he added a second ask: "Also if you're an enterprise looking to monetize your data (work traces, etc) - DM me" (post).
asked who it was, he kept it closed:
Still in stealth
- Kenan Saleh (@kenanhsaleh) October 8, 2026
the reactions
the big names piled in. andrew chen, also at a16z speedrun, quoted it with three sets of eyes (48.7k views):
👀👀👀
- andrew chen (@andrewchen) October 8, 2026
Gokul Rajaram kept it to three words:
Very good team.
- Gokul Rajaram (@gokulr) October 7, 2026
Jon Lai (@Tocelot): "the latest @speedrun class is 🔥" (post).
who is it?
Brycent quoted the post on october 8:
Interviewed the founder, can confirm they are cooking.
- Brycent (@brycent) October 8, 2026
someone asked "who" (post). his answer was three words:
San Francisco Data
- Brycent (@brycent) October 8, 2026
co-founder Brandon Guo replied to Brycent with ":)" (post). Kenan's description fits the company's own: selling data to ai labs, and his "work traces" line matches the essay San Francisco Data published a week earlier. the company has not announced anything itself.
what is san francisco data?
San Francisco Data helps companies capture and license their data to frontier ai labs. it is starting with production traces from coding agents, and describes its ambition as a Glencore for production traces.
on october 1 the founders published an essay, "Production traces and the future of data," on sfdata.com. the case, in their words:
"A decade ago, helping train AI meant drawing a box around a pedestrian. Today, it involves writing a legal brief or building a financial model."
"Contractor-generated training data starts to look like a race to the bottom."
"In this way, the economy itself can become the largest source of training data for advanced AI."
a production trace is the record of an ai working on a real task: the request, the context, the tool calls, the feedback. the bet is that companies already produce that data by using ai products, and that labs will pay for it. the model they point to:
"We often describe our ambition as a Glencore for production traces. Glencore did not need to own every mine or oil field."
and where they start: "The majority of economically valuable traces generated today come from coding agents, and that's where we are beginning."
X: @sfdata · sfdata.com · account created march 2026 · 129 followers on october 9 2026
who founded san francisco data?
San Francisco Data was founded by Brandon Guo and Faiz Siddiqi, who signed the company's october 1 essay. both list Mercor as a previous employer on X.
- Brandon Guo (@brandonguo): "helping founders sell data, ex-mercor. dms open."
- Faiz Siddiqi (@faizsiddiqii): "sf, data | ex-mercor"
the company is hiring engineers and operators: founders@sfdata.com.
the bear case
not everyone is sold. Nazneen Rajani, posting from the CoLM conference:
classic example of account concentration in the data market.
- Nazneen Rajani @ CoLM (@nazneenrajani) October 8, 2026
if anything, the last few days at CoLM have made it abundantly clear that this market runs on industry lore.
very easy for any new entrant to reach $80M-$100M in one-time revenue with a single account if you don't care much about margins.
the hard part is to build a sustainable business while maintaining high-quality standards
when did frontrun flag san francisco data?
frontrun flagged San Francisco Data (@sfdata) on August 14 2026, when the account had 35 followers, 54 days before Kenan Saleh's post. its co-founder Brandon Guo was first flagged on April 16 2026.
- apr 16 2026: @brandonguo flagged. the first tracked account to follow him was @kenanhsaleh.
- jul 17: 17 tracked accounts following the founder.
- aug 14: @sfdata flagged at 35 followers. kenan was first again.
- oct 1: the essay goes up on sfdata.com.
- oct 7: $0 to $60M in 3 months. 30 tracked accounts were following the founder by then. still in stealth.
- oct 8: named in the replies: San Francisco Data.
the company account has 129 followers today. the founder had been on frontrun for 174 days before the post.
more early companies
for the full record, see 46 startups we flagged before they raised, Catalyst, flagged 230 days before its $30M seed, the stealth startups list and how vcs find startups before they raise.
follow from the front: frontrun.vc
sources: Kenan Saleh on X (october 7 2026), the replies and quote posts embedded above, and "Production traces and the future of data" by Brandon Guo and Faiz Siddiqi (october 1 2026). the revenue figures are Kenan Saleh's, not the company's. flag dates and follower counts are from frontrun.
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