Crustdata announced today it has closed a $6 million seed funding round led by Y Combinator and A Capital. General Catalyst, SV Angel, and Phosphor Capital also participated in the round.

The company, which graduated from Y Combinator’s Fall 2024 cohort, has already proven its business model works. In just seven months, Crustdata scaled revenue from $770,000 to over $4 million while maintaining a sales team of one person and spending nothing on outbound marketing.

Building the Data Infrastructure for AI Agents

Crustdata is creating a real-time data layer that helps AI agents access up-to-date information from across the web. The platform uses custom crawlers to monitor companies and individuals online, allowing customers to identify prospects, founders, and recruiting candidates before they become widely known.

The technology is already being used by some of the world’s top AI sales development representatives, recruiting platforms, and investment teams. Y Combinator itself relies on Crustdata to power its founder discovery and recruitment efforts.

“Crustdata is one of the strongest companies to come out of the Fall 2024 YC batch. We were so impressed with the founding team and how quickly they’ve made inroads with B2B customers that we hired them to source and deliver data to help us find and recruit startups to join YC,” said Garry Tan, CEO and Founder of Y Combinator. “It quickly became clear that this was a bet I wanted to make from an investment perspective. Very soon, humans will no longer be the largest consumers of the web. Crustdata will be the gateway to the internet for agentic apps.”

Plans for Expansion and Hiring

The funding will support two main priorities: bringing on top engineering talent and building out the go-to-market team. The company is focused on solving what it calls “the challenging data-for-agents problem” as demand for AI infrastructure continues to grow.

Crustdata plans to target enterprise customers who need AI agents capable of acting on fresh, accurate data. The company sees this as the natural next step after establishing product-market fit with smaller B2B clients.

An Unconventional Growth Strategy

Rather than following traditional sales and marketing playbooks, Crustdata used its own platform to drive growth. The founders essentially ate their own dog food, relying on their product to identify and reach potential customers. This approach helped them reach profitability quickly without burning through capital on expensive customer acquisition.

The results speak for themselves. Dharmesh Shah, founder of HubSpot, uses Crustdata’s data as the foundation for his popular product, agent.ai. Ryan Reynolds’ company MNTN has deployed Crustdata to power a customized AI SDR that handles pipeline building and outreach for their sales team.

Three Founders, One Shared Vision

The founding team came together in an unusual way. Co-founders Abhilash Chowdhary and Chris Pisarski met through Y Combinator’s co-founder matching tool in 2023. One was based in San Francisco, the other in New York. Despite the distance, they quickly realized they shared a vision for what would become Crustdata. Manmohit Grewal later joined as the third co-founder.

Chowdhary brings deep technical experience from his time leading engineering teams at Uber and Postmates, where he built the robotics platform for autonomous delivery robots. His background in complex systems and real-time data processing proved valuable for building Crustdata’s infrastructure.

Pisarski previously served as CEO of PrivCo, a private company database used by major corporations including Microsoft, American Express, and Deloitte. His experience in B2B data and understanding of enterprise customer needs helped shape Crustdata’s product and business model.

“AI Agents are only as intelligent as their data sources, so we’re excited to work with investors who understand both AI infrastructure and B2B data,” said Abhilash Chowdhary, co-founder and CEO of Crustdata. “Our next phase involves expanding to enterprise customers who need AI agents that can act on fresh, accurate data in real-time.”

Strong Investor Backing for the AI Data Layer

The seed round brought together investors with expertise in both artificial intelligence and B2B software. Y Combinator’s direct involvement as both a lead investor and customer validates the company’s approach and technology.

A Capital, known for backing infrastructure companies, co-led the round alongside Y Combinator. General Catalyst, SV Angel, and Phosphor Capital joined as participants, bringing additional resources and networks to support Crustdata’s growth.

“We will use the funds to hire top engineers interested in solving the challenging data-for-agents problem as well as to build out our GTM team,” added Chris Pisarski, co-founder of Crustdata.

The combination of rapid revenue growth, profitability, and blue-chip customers positions Crustdata to capture a significant share of the emerging market for AI agent infrastructure. As more businesses deploy autonomous agents, the demand for reliable, real-time data sources will only increase.

Origianl Creator: Ekaterina Pisareva
Original Link: https://justainews.com/companies/funding-news/yc-backed-crustdata-raises-6m-to-power-ai-agents-with-live-data/
Originally Posted: Thu, 23 Oct 2025 21:38:31 +0000