Mecka AI Nears $500 Million Valuation in Sequoia-Led Funding Deal

Mecka AI is nearing a new funding round led by Sequoia Capital that would value the robotics data startup at about $500 million, according to two people familiar with the deal.

The financing comes only three months after Mecka raised $60 million in a round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Menlo Ventures, SV Angel and Kindred Ventures. The terms of the new deal have not been finalised and could still change.

Mecka did not respond to a request for comment, while Sequoia declined to comment.

Mecka targets a data bottleneck in robotics

Founded in 2024, Mecka collects and analyses human motion data used to train humanoid robots and other robotic systems. The company pays people to record themselves performing everyday activities, such as making coffee or repairing cars, using smartphones and body sensors.

Co-founders Josh Gao and Mogen Cheng previously built a restaurant fintech startup, while Jason Chong joined Coinbase after the crypto company acquired his exchange. The fourth co-founder, Duy Nguyen, focuses on operations. None of the four came from a robotics background.

Instead, the founders focused on what they saw as a shortage of physical-world data for training general-purpose robots. Mecka’s approach resembles the human-data businesses that emerged around large language models, but applies data collection to physical tasks and human movement.

Investors chase robot training data

Mecka has not disclosed its customers, but robotics companies and AI labs use real-world data collected through egocentric recording, along with techniques such as teleoperation, to train models that interact with physical environments.

The startup has also set aggressive growth targets. In early June, Gao told Fortune that Mecka expected to finish 2026 at a $100 million annual revenue run rate.

Investor interest in the sector is increasing as robotics companies seek larger volumes of real-world training data. XDOF, another startup collecting physical-world data for robots, was recently nearing a funding round at a $1.2 billion valuation. Human-data companies including Scale AI and Micro1 are also expanding beyond data used primarily for large language models. Mecka’s potential $500 million valuation reflects the growing competition to supply the datasets needed to train increasingly capable robotic systems.