Mecka AI nears $500 million valuation in Sequoia-led round as robot training data demand grows
Mecka AI is nearing a Sequoia-led funding round at a valuation of about $500 million, three months after raising $60 million, as demand for robot training data grows.
The financing would come just three months after Mecka announced that it raised $60 million in a round led by Framework Ventures that included participation from Menlo Ventures, SV Angel and Kindred Ventures. TechCrunch said it has not learned the precise size of the new round, and the terms of the deal are not final and could still change. Mecka AI did not respond to a request for comment, and Sequoia declined to comment.
Mecka AI was co-founded in 2024 by four entrepreneurs, including Canadians Josh Gao and Mogen Cheng, who previously built a restaurant fintech startup, and Jason Chong, who joined Coinbase after it acquired his crypto exchange. Duy Nguyen, the only non-Canadian on the team, focuses on operations at Mecka. The four co-founders do not have backgrounds in robotics, but they recognized that there was a dearth of physical-world data and realized that capturing real-world interactions was the primary bottleneck holding back general-purpose robots, including humanoids.
Mecka, which derives its name from “mecha,” a fictional giant robot controlled by humans, set out to do for robotics what Scale AI, Mercor, Surge and other human data companies have done for large language models. The startup pays people to record themselves performing everyday tasks, such as making coffee or fixing cars, using body sensors and smartphones.
As of early June, Mecka was projecting that it would end 2026 at an annual run rate of $100 million, Gao told Fortune when the startup announced its previous fundraise. While Mecka AI has not publicly disclosed its customer list, many robotics companies and AI labs rely on real-world data captured through this “egocentric” approach, alongside other physical data collection methods like teleoperation, to build their models.
Other startups collecting real-world data for robot training include XDOF, which TechCrunch reported last week was nearing a new round at a $1.2 billion valuation, as well as human-data platforms expanding beyond LLMs, such as Scale AI and Micro1.
Editor's Summary
Mecka AI is close to a Sequoia-led round at a valuation of about $500 million, three months after a $60 million raise. The company pays people to record everyday tasks for robot training data, a field drawing growing investor interest.