Data is the oil of the AI boom—and the startup Mecka AI hopes to tap the vast reservoir of hand gestures, walking gaits, and immense collection of humanity’s physical motions to better train our future overlords: robots.
So-called “embodied” AI data isn’t exactly novel. Wayve, the British autonomous driving company, has trained its models on visual input pulled from car cameras. And, on Friday, the startup MicroAGI announced that it was offering New Yorkers a free home cleaning—if they consented to cameras recording the cleaners’ every action.
Still, Josh Gao, Mecka AI’s cofounder and CEO, believes that his startup is a first mover—and his investors believe he has a chance to strike it big. Headquartered in New York City, the company has raised a total of $60 million across two previously unannounced fundraises: a $25 million Series A round closed in November and $35 million in a follow-on investment. Gao declined to tell me at what valuation he raised the capital.
Framework Ventures, a VC best known for its crypto investments, led the rounds. Other investors who participated included Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, Kindred Ventures, and the angel Ted Xiao, a former researcher at Google DeepMind and founding member at Jeff Bezos’s AI startup Project Prometheus.
