Mecka AI, a startup focused on gathering and analyzing human motion data to enhance humanoid robots and other types of robotics, is on the brink of securing a new funding round led by Sequoia Capital, which could bring the company's valuation to around $500 million, according to sources familiar with the situation.
This upcoming funding round follows a successful raise just three months prior, where Mecka secured $60 million in a round led by Framework Ventures, with involvement from Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, and Kindred Ventures.
While the specific amount of the new funding round has yet to be disclosed, the deal's terms remain tentative and could be subject to change.
Mecka AI has not provided any comments on the matter, and Sequoia has also opted to remain silent.
Founded in 2024, Mecka AI was established by a team of four entrepreneurs, including Canadians Josh Gao and Mogen Cheng, who previously developed a fintech platform for restaurants, along with Jason Chong, who joined the company after Coinbase acquired his crypto exchange. The team's fourth member, Duy Nguyen, who handles operations, is the only non-Canadian.
The founders do not possess traditional robotics backgrounds. However, they identified a significant gap in physical-world data and realized that capturing real-time human interactions was crucial to overcoming the limitations faced by general-purpose robots, such as humanoid models.
The name Mecka is inspired by the term "mecha," a fictional concept of giant humanoid robots controlled by humans. The startup aims to revolutionize robotics by doing for this sector what companies like Scale AI have accomplished for large language models. To achieve this, Mecka compensates individuals for recording themselves performing everyday tasks—such as brewing coffee or repairing vehicles—using body sensors and smartphones.
By early June, Mecka was projecting it would achieve a $100 million annual run rate by the end of 2026, as Gao shared with Fortune during the announcement of their previous funding.
Although Mecka AI has not publicly revealed its clients, the startup’s innovative “egocentric” data collection approach is utilized by numerous robotics firms and AI laboratories, who rely on this real-world data along with other physical data acquisition methods, such as teleoperation, to develop their models.
Other companies in the same space focused on real-world data collection for robot training include XDOF, which was recently reported to be approaching a new funding round at a valuation of $1.2 billion, along with human-data platforms branching out beyond just large language models, such as Scale AI and Micro1.
