Halluminate

Contacts

• Official website: https://www.halluminate.ai/
• General contact (homepage 'Contact Us'): [email protected]
• Expert Network onboarding and account help: [email protected]
• Data Partnerships interest form: https://www.halluminate.ai/data-partnerships
• Careers (Ashby job board): https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/halluminate

Locations

Considering Halluminate's Expert Network, a job or a partnership? What to check

Halluminate, Inc. describes itself as "a data research lab building benchmarks and RL environments to push the frontier of AI in knowledge work." Its customers, as it describes them, are AI labs and AI-agent companies, not the general public, so searches for "Halluminate reviews" may come from three groups: a finance professional considering its paid Expert Network, a job applicant, or a company considering a data partnership. This section is organised around those cases.

If you are considering or already working in the Expert Network. Halluminate's Expert Network page (halluminate.ai/experts) says the role is "a 1099 independent contractor role," that it "operate[s] on a 1099 basis only," and that it cannot offer W-2 employment or visa sponsorship. It lists role-group pay ranges of $100–$250 per hour, says training pays "a milestone of $1,500–$4,000, depending on the project, upon successful completion" rather than hourly pay, and says "Training time is not logged as work hours." Its FAQ says onboarding includes a background check through Checkr and an offer letter in Rippling, and that "Rates increase quickly based on performance." These are the company's own statements, as displayed on 2026-10-01.

Time commitment: the FAQ gives different wording in different answers. One answer says "We require a minimum of 20 hours per week for at least 6 consecutive weeks"; another says "We'd appreciate a commitment of around 20 hours per week" and invites people to reach out "regardless of your availability"; the visa answer says "We can guarantee 20+ hours per week, but the schedule is ad hoc given the contractor structure." Ask what is required in writing before you plan around it.

Training and pay timing. The FAQ says training is self-paced and "takes roughly two weeks (typically 15–20 hours of work)," that it pays the milestone of $1,500–$4,000 only "upon successful completion — finishing the required modules plus delivering two successful problems," and that it is not paid hourly or per problem. It also says "A US bank account is required for payroll compliance," while a separate answer says "We support work from outside the US" (work is "not permitted from certain countries"). Direct deposit is set up in Rippling under Payroll → My Pay → Bank Accounts.

• Before you start, read every agreement you are asked to sign (the offer letter in Rippling and anything in the screener or on the Horizon platform) and keep a copy. The public pages checked on 2026-10-01 do not display the full contractor agreement; the FAQ says "The Rippling offer letter must be signed before training access is unlocked," and the documents shown after you apply were not viewed.
• Note how the page describes the arrangement. The same FAQ calls the role a 1099 contractor position and also refers to "employment paperwork in Rippling" and "payroll" (it also says "A US bank account is required for payroll compliance"). Ask Halluminate in writing how you are classified and how payment is made, and check the answer against your own situation. If you have questions about worker classification or unpaid wages, the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division says on its complaints page that you can call 1-866-487-9243; your state labor agency may also handle such questions.
• Keep records of hours, deliverables, milestone approvals and messages with your Team Lead. The FAQ says the pay for training depends on finishing the required modules "plus delivering two successful problems," so keep proof of what you submitted and when.
• For account, screener, access or deactivation problems, the Expert Network FAQ directs people to email [email protected] and says "Most access and account problems are resolved within 24 hours."
• Visa and school questions. The FAQ says eligibility for CPT or OPT work "depends entirely on your school and individual visa terms" and tells applicants to confirm with the school's international office or visa advisor before starting.
• Privacy. The application form asks for name, LinkedIn profile, email, country of work, an optional country of issued ID, work authorization, current school, availability and a resume. No Terms or Privacy link was identified on the pages checked (see the background section), so ask what is retained and for how long before uploading identity or employment documents.

If you are a company considering a data partnership, the Data Partnerships page states its offer as "Turn your company's data and workflows into a new revenue opportunity" (Halluminate's own claim). The page publishes no pricing, revenue-share, data-ownership, retention, security or deletion terms. It says it only asks for contact details and that "Halluminate will use this information to contact you about a potential data partnership"; it also says "Do not include confidential or sensitive information." Do not send confidential data through the form before a written agreement is in place.

General contact: [email protected] (homepage). Expert Network help: [email protected]. The sources checked did not show a telephone number or a public street address.

If you are applying for a job rather than the Expert Network. The company's Ashby job board (public posting API, checked 2026-10-01) listed 9 postings, each shown as full-time, on-site, San Francisco. The Platform Engineering posting says "Base: $215–275k · Equity: 0.10–0.20% · Location: San Francisco, 5 days in office," a $10k+ relocation stipend and "We sponsor visas, including H-1B." Y Combinator's company page shows a $200K–$275K range for the same role, so the two pages differ. These job-posting visa terms differ from the Expert Network FAQ, which says "We also cannot support H-1B transfers or visa sponsorship" for the contractor role.

Who Halluminate is and what it sells

Who it is. The website footer reads "© 2026 Halluminate, Inc." Y Combinator's company page lists Halluminate as Summer 2025, "Active," San Francisco, with Jerry Wu (Founder/CEO) and Wyatt Marshall (Founder/CTO) as active founders. Y Combinator shows "Founded: 2024" and "Team Size: 5"; Fortune's October 1, 2026 article describes it as a "nine-person" San Francisco startup "founded in 2024." No street address appeared on the company pages checked.

Registry record. The New York Department of State's open-data corporation records (data.ny.gov, queried 2026-10-01 for the name HALLUMINATE) list HALLUMINATE, INC., DOS ID 7284998, as a foreign business corporation with jurisdiction "DE" (Delaware) and a Delaware incorporation date of 03/13/2024. Its application of authority to do business in New York was filed 2024-03-20, a certificate of change was filed 2025-07-10 (approved 2025-07-11), and a biennial statement was filed 2026-03-07; the registry status shows "Active" after each filing, and the name-history table shows only HALLUMINATE, INC. The New York service-of-process and registered-agent address in the 2025 and 2026 filings is Telos Legal Corp., 5500 Main St., Ste 345, Williamsville, NY 14221; that is the address filed for legal process and is not a statement of where the company operates. The Delaware record itself and a California registration were not checked (a California Secretary of State search was blocked by a security page on 2026-10-01).

What it sells (company descriptions). The company's research page lists benchmarks and environments including Web Bench (May 30, 2025), BrowserBench (Nov 22, 2025), Westworld v1 (Nov 23, 2025, "AI sandbox environments for training and evaluating computer-use agents on realistic simulated websites"), the Westworld Finance Diligence Bench (Aug 11, 2026, a benchmark of 88 problems on a complete acquisition due-diligence process) and a "Simulated-to-Real Transfer for Web Agents" study (Jul 27, 2026). Its Series A post says the first area of focus is financial services and that it is "rapidly expanding to adjacent verticals." Y Combinator's launch text describes "realistic sandboxes," "datasets" and "evaluations" for computer- and browser-use AI.

Named partners. The company's Westworld post says it "partnered with Yutori," and Yutori's own post introducing its Navigator agent says it built Navi-Bench "in collaboration with Halluminate" and reports "human evaluation results from Halluminate." The company's llms.txt file also lists case studies for Athena Intelligence and Amplitech AI; those pages were not opened. The Series A post says it has "built and scaled RL environments with four of the five leading closed-source U.S. AI labs" but names none.

Funding and growth: company statements and a press report that relays them. A post on halluminate.ai dated October 1, 2026 says Halluminate raised "$30 million in Series A funding led by Oak HC/FT with participation from YCombinator, Orange Collective, FT Partners, and Heavybit," bringing "total capital raised up to $38.5 million," and says it grew "from $0 to a mid-eight-figure revenue run rate while remaining strongly profitable" in the last 10 months. Fortune's article of the same date reports the round and the $38.5 million total, and attributes the customer and run-rate statements to CEO Jerry Wu (it says Wu told Fortune that four of the top five closed-source U.S. AI labs are paying customers and that the run rate is based on quarterly revenue from work already delivered and paid for); Fortune does not present them as audited figures. An SEC EDGAR full-text search for "Halluminate" returned no hits on 2026-10-01. Revenue, customer and valuation claims are the company's own.

Terms and privacy. No Terms or Privacy link was identified in the navigation or footer of the homepage, Expert Network page or Data Partnerships page on 2026-10-01 (the navigation lists Research, Expert Network, Careers and Data Partnerships). Direct requests to halluminate.ai/terms, /privacy, /privacy-policy, /terms-of-service, /terms-and-conditions, /legal, /contractor-terms, /security, /cookies and /tos each returned HTTP 404 on 2026-10-01. This covers those pages and paths only; documents shown after application (the screener, Rippling offer letter, Horizon platform) were not viewed because they require an account.

Name check. The name is spelled with a double "l." A Trustpilot search for "halluminate" returned listings named Illuminate (illuminateessentials.com), illuminate (illuminate.global) and elluminate (elluminateme.com); those listings were not opened and nothing is stated here about their relationship to Halluminate. Make sure you are on halluminate.ai, the domain in the company's own footer and YC listing, before sharing documents.

What was checked for complaints and reviews

Counts below are as displayed or returned on 2026-10-01; "none found" means none in the sources named, not that none exist anywhere.

• Own complaints. usacomplaints.com has no approved complaint about Halluminate; none is linked to this page.
• BBB. A BBB search for "Halluminate" returned "No Results Found," and a search for "Halluminate, Inc." near San Francisco, CA also returned no results.
• Trustpilot. A search for "halluminate" returned no Halluminate listing, and trustpilot.com/review/halluminate.ai displayed "The page you're looking for could not be found."
• ComplaintsBoard. A search for "halluminate" returned "No reviews matching “halluminate”."
• Courts. CourtListener's API returned 0 RECAP dockets and 0 opinions for the exact phrase "Halluminate."
• Data breaches. The California Attorney General's breach list, searched by organization name "Halluminate," showed "There are currently no published reported breaches."
• Not checked or not completed: FTC and state attorney general enforcement pages (an FTC legal-library search on 2026-10-01 did not apply the search term, so it is not counted as a check), OSHA, USPTO trademark records, social media and forum posts (Reddit could not be opened on 2026-10-01), and employer-review sites. CFPB was not searched because Halluminate does not describe itself as offering a financial product.

The absence of reviews or complaints on these sites reflects what those sites display, not a finding about the company's conduct; a business-facing company would not necessarily appear on consumer-review sites.

Is Halluminate Legitimate?

Halluminate, Inc. is named in the footer of halluminate.ai, is listed by Y Combinator as a Summer 2025 company with named founders, and publishes research posts, a GitHub organization (github.com/Halluminate) and an Ashby job board. A partner company (Yutori) describes a collaboration with it in its own published post. Fortune reported its Series A on October 1, 2026, and the New York Department of State lists HALLUMINATE, INC. (Delaware) as an active foreign corporation. No BBB file, Trustpilot listing, ComplaintsBoard entry, CourtListener docket or opinion, or California Attorney General breach-list entry was found under the name on 2026-10-01 (see the record section for exactly what was searched; regulator enforcement pages were not searched).

Open points that could not be verified: the Delaware record and the company's operating street address; the revenue-run-rate and "four of the five leading" lab statements, which come from the company's own post and from its CEO as relayed by Fortune; and the contractual terms of the Expert Network, since the public pages do not disclose the complete contractor agreement. No Terms or Privacy link was identified on the homepage, Expert Network page or Data Partnerships page on 2026-10-01. Whether to join, work for or sign with the company depends on the documents you receive; read them and keep copies.

Frequently Asked Questions