Crustdata Closes $6M to Build Real-Time Data Layer for AI Agent Intelligence
Crustdata secured $6 million in seed funding to power real-time data infrastructure specifically designed for AI agents that need live, actionable intelligence rather than static datasets.
The Y Combinator-backed startup addresses a fundamental bottleneck: autonomous agents require fresh data to make effective decisions, but most existing data sources provide outdated snapshots that limit agent capabilities in dynamic business environments.
The Stale Data Bottleneck
Enterprise AI agents face a critical infrastructure gap between the speed of business change and the freshness of available data. Traditional data providers update company and people information weekly, monthly, or even quarterly—leaving agents operating on obsolete intelligence when tracking funding rounds, executive moves, hiring patterns, or market developments.
This staleness creates significant limitations for autonomous workflows in sales, recruiting, and investment research where timing determines success. An AI agent that discovers a company’s funding round weeks after it happens has missed the optimal engagement window.
Live Web Intelligence Architecture
Crustdata’s platform uses proprietary crawlers to continuously monitor the web and aggregate data from over 16 verified global sources, creating a real-time data layer that serves structured information about 1 billion people and 60 million companies through APIs and data feeds.
The technical architecture enables agents to access over 250 company and people data fields including headcount trends, funding activity, SEO metrics, social signals, and hiring changes as they happen. The system supports both on-demand queries and real-time alerts via webhooks, allowing agents to monitor specific parameters and trigger automated workflows when conditions change.
Co-founder Abhilash Chowdhary, who previously led robotics engineering at Uber for autonomous delivery systems, brings distributed systems expertise to scaling real-time data processing at global volume. Chris Pisarski, former CEO of PrivCo’s enterprise database platform, adds enterprise data architecture experience.
Rapid Enterprise Adoption
The platform demonstrated strong product-market fit by scaling revenue from $770,000 to over $4 million in seven months without outbound marketing—suggesting enterprises are actively seeking real-time data infrastructure for their AI initiatives.
Y Combinator itself uses Crustdata for founder discovery and recruitment, indicating practical adoption within the accelerator ecosystem. The funding round was led by Y Combinator and A Capital, with participation from General Catalyst, SV Angel, and Phosphor Capital.
Infrastructure Evolution
The funding reflects a broader shift toward purpose-built data infrastructure for autonomous systems. As enterprises deploy AI agents for business-critical functions, the demand for live data feeds becomes essential infrastructure rather than a nice-to-have feature.
Traditional static data approaches that work for human analysis fail when agents need to act autonomously on changing conditions. Real-time data infrastructure becomes the foundation enabling agents to maintain accuracy and effectiveness in dynamic business environments.
Looking Forward
Crustdata plans to expand its engineering and go-to-market teams while building additional data sources and agent integration capabilities. The company is targeting enterprise customers deploying AI agents that require continuous access to fresh business intelligence.
The real-time data layer represents critical infrastructure for the autonomous agent economy—where the speed of data updates directly determines the quality of agent decision-making and business outcomes.
The transition from human-analyzed static data to agent-consumed real-time intelligence marks a fundamental infrastructure evolution. Overclock provides complementary agent orchestration capabilities, enabling teams to coordinate multiple autonomous agents across complex workflows while ensuring they operate on the freshest available data.