Mecka

Mecka (Mecka AI) is a physical-AI data company that collects, annotates and delivers real-world human activity data used to train and evaluate robotics and embodied AI models. Rather than relying on teleoperation, in which humans manually pilot a robot, the company's hypothesis is that models can be trained on data recorded from people performing everyday tasks. Data is captured through custom hardware such as body sensors and tactile gloves as well as consumer iPhones, and is then processed with annotation, context labeling, QA, motion understanding and evaluation workflows before delivery to customers. Its large-scale first-person human interaction dataset is branded Egoverse, spanning tasks, spaces and environments and intended for studying how people move, manipulate objects and complete tasks.

The product surface has three parts: an iOS mobile app for collecting environment- and task-specific data in labs and at scale; a web data tool for browsing, visualizing and querying datasets, collaborating with teams and running inference APIs; and an enterprise offering for evaluating physical workflows and supporting real-world deployments. The company states that it does not build robots, positioning itself instead as an integrator that plugs into hardware, model and commercial ecosystems and owns the data and integration layer between them. Reported customer engagements range from custom dataset collection to model evaluations and multi-environment data programs, with the CEO saying the company intends to help firms directly integrate and train robotics models rather than acting only as a data aggregator.

Early data supply combined a consumer-facing component — a gig-style model in which users record themselves completing tasks, later reframed as gamified "daily quests" — with vetted "higher tier operators" who receive Mecka-built hardware rigs for commissioned corporate training runs. Recorded tasks reported in press coverage include barista work, operating a deep fryer, making a bed and solving a Rubik's Cube.

Founding story

The four cofounders — Josh Gao (CEO), Jason Chong (CTO), Mogen Cheng (CPO) and Duy Nguyen (COO) — knew each other through mutual friends and came from outside robotics research. Gao, an Ivey Business School graduate at Western University in Ontario, and Cheng previously built and sold a startup providing payments/ghost-kitchen software for restaurants, acquired in 2023; Gao also drew Canadian press in 2023 for an AI translation app built as a side project. Chong was cofounder and CTO of crypto startup Utopia Labs through its acquisition by Coinbase, and Nguyen made money reselling sneakers. After deciding to pursue AI for robots, the team spent months reading research papers, visiting robotics labs and messaging roboticists, concluding that data was the sector's bottleneck. They landed on training robots on human-collected rather than teleoperation data, partnered with robotics labs to demonstrate it at scale, and in 2025 — after amassing thousands of gigabytes of data — formally started the company. The name derives from "mecha," the piloted robots of the Gundam anime series, with one letter changed.

Business model

Mecka sells real-world human activity data and related services to robotics and AI organizations. Engagements include access to its existing datasets, commissioned task-specific data collection, model evaluation runs, and larger multi-environment data programs, alongside enterprise support for evaluating physical workflows and deploying robots. Supply is sourced from paid human contributors — including tradespeople such as baristas, cooks and mechanics — who record themselves performing tasks using smartphones or company-supplied hardware, with delivered video anonymized and labeled for model ingestion.

Revenue comes from paid contracts with corporate and research customers for datasets, custom collection, evaluation and deployment services. The company reported an projected annual run rate of $100 million based on already-signed contracts as of June 2026, and stated it holds paid contracts with several Fortune 100 corporations.

Traction

Reported traction includes an early partnership with 1X Technologies, whose World Model generation used household motion data from Mecka; paid contracts with several unnamed Fortune 100 corporations; a projected $100 million annual run rate from signed contracts; and a few thousand app downloads with continuing active users as of August 2025. An investor described the company as the fastest-growing revenue company in its portfolio. Headcount reached 40 employees by June 2026, with 25 open roles listed across six teams.

Latest developments

In June 2026, Fortune reported that Mecka had raised $60 million in total across two previously unannounced fundraises — a $25 million Series A closed in November 2025 and a $35 million follow-on — led by Framework Ventures, with Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, Kindred Ventures and angel Ted Xiao participating. At the same time the company reported 40 employees, a projected $100 million annual run rate from signed contracts, a New York City headquarters, and custom capture equipment in production at a Shenzhen factory. Its careers page lists 25 open roles across research, platform engineering, hardware and robotics, field engineering, operations and corporate functions.