We became the employer we wished existed
Veterans of the AI training industry started OBG after watching brilliant experts spread thin across six dashboards, chasing six payouts for the same kind of work. We did the simple thing nobody else would: we became the employer ourselves. We publish the briefs, we set the rates, we pay the people who do the work.
Our mission
To make sure the experts powering frontier AI get paid like specialists, not like crowd workers — by a real employer, not a faceless aggregator.
What we believe
The data behind every great model came from a human. That human deserves transparency, dignity, and a fair share of the value they create — paid directly, not skimmed by a chain of middlemen.
How we make money
Frontier AI labs and enterprise buyers hire OBG to staff briefs end-to-end. They pay our headline rate; we keep a small operating margin and pass the rest straight through to the expert. You never pay us — not now, not ever.
From six dashboards to one employer
The problem we kept seeing
Talk to any senior radiologist, attorney, or quant who moonlights on AI training and you'll hear the same thing: half a dozen accounts, half a dozen rate cards, half a dozen invoicing portals — and reviewers who couldn't tell a board-certified specialist from a freshly onboarded gig worker. The work was world-class. The plumbing around it was not.
The fix nobody else would build
So we stopped trying to glue platforms together and built the employer instead. OBG hires experts directly, on real contracts, with real W-9 / W-8BEN paperwork, real onboarding, and rates set against benchmarks for that specialty — not floor-priced against the median crowd worker. One login. One paycheck. One team that has your back.
The OBG roster today
A short timeline
2022–23 · The thesis
Elena and David, running ops and matching infra at two of the largest AI training networks, kept losing top experts to platform churn and opaque payouts. They write the first OBG contracts and onboard ten experts across medical, legal, and financial fields.
2024 · The roster scales
Roster crosses 10,000 across twelve specialised fields. First seven-figure annual brief landed end-to-end on OBG infrastructure. Sophia joins to run expert success — because retention is the business.
2025 · $42M to experts
Pass-through model proven at scale. Average expert payout rises year over year for the third year running, while platform-side margins stay flat by design.
2026 · What's next
Expand into three new specialties, ship a public rate benchmark so the industry stops guessing, and put the first cohort of OBG experts on multi-year retainers with frontier labs.
Four rules we won't bend
Pay first, pay clearly
Every brief shows the headline rate before you accept. Payouts land on a fixed cycle, in your currency, with line-item itemisation. No "platform credits", no rolling holdbacks, no surprises.
Hire the specialist, not the crowd
We verify credentials once, deeply — and then trust the expert to do the work. No re-qualifying you on every brief, no calibration tasks priced at $0.40, no captchas for board-certified specialists.
Rubrics in plain English
If a brief needs a 40-page rubric to be reviewable, the brief is wrong. We co-write rubrics with the labs and with our senior experts before a single task goes live.
The expert owns their reputation
Your portfolio, ratings, and history belong to you and travel with you across briefs. We will never sell your data, and you can export it at any time.
Built by operators, not just engineers
Every OBG founder spent years recruiting, vetting, or managing experts in the AI training industry. We've sat on both sides of the table — and we built OBG to fix the parts neither side liked.
Elena Lange
Co-founder & CEO
Former operations lead at one of the top AI training networks. PhD in computational linguistics.
LinkedIn
David Walker Park
Co-founder & CTO
Built matching systems at scale for two-sided marketplaces. Open-source contributor to ranking and ML infra.
LinkedInSophia Reyes
Head of Expert Success
Six years inside crowd platforms, keeping top experts engaged and supported. Knows every rubric by heart.
What our experts say
"First platform where I felt like a hired consultant and not a contestant. The rate matched what I'd charge a hospital for second-opinion work — and the rubric actually respected my clinical judgement."
"One login. One paycheck. Payouts hit on the day they say they will. After three years of juggling crowd platforms, that alone is worth switching for."
