Mecka AI nears about $500M valuation in new Sequoia-led round

Mecka AI, a startup that collects and analyzes human motion data to train humanoid robots and other robotics, is nearing a new round led by Sequoia Capital at a valuation of about $500 million, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. The financing comes just three months after Mecka announced it had raised $60 million in a round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, and Kindred Ventures.

TechCrunch 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; 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 don’t have backgrounds in robotics, but they recognized a dearth of physical-world data and concluded that capturing real-world interactions was the primary bottleneck holding back general-purpose robots, including humanoids.

Mecka, whose name derives 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 — like making coffee or fixing cars — using body sensors and smartphones. As of early June, Mecka was projecting 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 hasn’t 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.

Why it matters

Mecka’s rapid re-up, just three months after its last round, underscores how urgently investors are chasing physical-world training data as the bottleneck for humanoid robotics — and how quickly valuations in that niche are climbing.