Mecka AI Nears $500 Million Valuation Amid Robot Data Rush

Mecka AI is approaching a new funding round led by Sequoia Capital that would value the startup at approximately $500 million, TechCrunch reports, citing two sources familiar with the matter. This potential deal follows a $60 million round announced three months prior, which was led by Framework Ventures and included Kindred Ventures, SV Angel, and Menlo Ventures.

Founded in 2024 by Jason Chong, Mogen Cheng, Josh Gao, and Duy Nguyen, Mecka AI focuses on capturing real-world human interactions to train humanoid robots. The founders identified a lack of physical-world data as the primary obstacle to developing general-purpose robotics. To address this, Mecka pays individuals to use smartphones and body sensors to record common activities, such as fixing cars or making coffee.

While Mecka AI has not released its customer list, TechCrunch notes that AI labs and robotics firms utilize this "egocentric" data collection alongside teleoperation to refine their models. The company's growth trajectory is aggressive; Josh Gao previously told Fortune that Mecka projected an annual run rate of $100 million by the end of 2026.

Mecka is part of a broader trend of companies racing to secure high-fidelity training data. TechCrunch recently reported that XDOF was nearing a round at a $1.2 billion valuation, while other human-data platforms like Micro1 and Scale AI are also expanding their capabilities beyond large language models.