Mecka AI, a New York based startup that collects human motion data to train robots, has raised USD 60 million in a Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital. The company announced the round on October 7, 2026, and said the money will scale its data infrastructure, grow its internal research lab and build out commercial robot deployment.
The new round is separate from the USD 60 million Mecka had already disclosed in June 2026, which covered a Series A and a follow-on. TechCrunch reported in September that the startup was nearing a deal at a valuation of about USD 500 million. Mecka has not confirmed the valuation.
Who backed the round
Sequoia Capital led the Series B. NVIDIA, M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund), Qualcomm Ventures and Samsung came in as new investors, while Kindred, Framework Ventures and Neo continued their support. Mecka also named several angels: Tony Xu, the founder and chief executive of DoorDash, Frank Slootman, the former chief executive of ServiceNow and Snowflake, and Milan Kovac, who earlier led Tesla’s Optimus humanoid program.
What the startup actually does
Mecka pays people to record themselves doing everyday tasks, such as making coffee or repairing a car, while wearing body sensors and carrying a smartphone. The company processes that motion data and packages it to train humanoid and other robots. Mecka designs and builds its own multi sensor capture hardware, runs capture fleets in homes and commercial sites, and uses its research lab to turn raw footage into structured signal, including sub centimetre hand pose accuracy. Its founders describe the business as the robotics equivalent of Scale AI, Mercor and Surge, which supply human made data for language models. The company also published EgoVerse, a human to robot transfer study run with researchers at Georgia Tech, Stanford, UC San Diego, ETH Zurich, MIT and Meta.
Read more: AI agent startup Manus raised more than USD 500 million after a planned deal with Meta fell through, a sign of how quickly capital is moving into AI and robotics.
Where the money will go
According to the company, the fresh capital goes into three areas: more capture instruments and data infrastructure, deeper research inside its lab, and commercial deployment of robots at customer sites. Mecka positions itself as a modern robotics integrator. A traditional integrator ships a system once, while Mecka says its deployments capture data on site, post train on it and improve with every hour they run. The company counts several frontier robotics labs and multiple large technology companies among its customers.
Revenue and the competitive field
Mecka said it crossed USD 100 million in run rate revenue in June 2026, only months after operations began, and projects a USD 300 million run rate by the end of the year. Those are company figures and have not been independently verified. Robotics training data has become one of the most competitive corners of AI investing. XDOF, a rival, was in talks to raise at a USD 1.2 billion valuation, and language model data firms such as Scale AI and Micro1 have started moving into robotics as well.
Founders and background
Mecka AI was founded in 2024 by four entrepreneurs, none of whom came from robotics. Josh Gao, the co-founder and chief executive, and Mogen Cheng are both Canadian and had earlier built a restaurant fintech business. Jason Chong joined Coinbase after it acquired his crypto exchange. Duy Nguyen, the only non Canadian in the group, runs operations. The company name comes from mecha, the giant robot of Japanese animation.
What happens next
The round adds Sequoia to a cap table that already includes Framework Ventures, Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, Kindred Ventures and angel investor Ted Xiao. Mecka said it is hiring across research, hardware and operations, and is looking for capture partners and customers. Its task now is to convert an early data lead into durable contracts while bigger data firms and well funded rivals crowd into the same market.
