Training data and experts
Companies that supply labelled, expert-written and synthetic data that labs use to train and grade models.
Who is making money
The companies earning or raising real money in this part of AI. Suppliers are marked: they sell to the builders rather than to end users.
pays vetted experts to write training data
About $2B gross annualised run rate in June 2026, reported by The Information. Gross means before contractor pay, which Sacra says is 60 to 70 percent of it
Open profiledata labelling
Meta paid $14.3B for 49%
Open profilehigh-end human data, self-funded
About $1.2B in 2024 (Sacra estimate)
Open profileListed data company that collects and labels AI training data, with a fast-growing China business.
Group revenue A$119.9M in the half year to June 2026 (ASX filing)
Open profilestudent network turned expert supplier
About $1.1B annualised gross revenue in April 2026 (Sacra estimate). Net revenue about $450M after contractor pay
Open profileRuns human feedback and training data operations for frontier labs and large enterprises.
$134M in 2024, company figure reported by Sacra
Open profileSells data labelling software and a data service for building AI training sets.
About $50M in 2024 (Latka estimate)
Open profileSupplies vetted domain experts, such as PhDs and senior engineers, to AI labs for training data.
More than $100M annual recurring revenue by December 2025 (TechCrunch). Sacra estimates about $500M annualised in August 2026 (estimate)
Open profileBuilds finished training datasets and simulated environments for AI labs, enterprises and the US government.
Annualised run rate above $350M, company figure in September 2026. Implicator reports $375M
Open profileSupplies coding and engineering experts who train, test and check AI models for labs.
About $300M annual recurring revenue at its March 2025 round (TechCrunch)
Open profileWhere the money flows
AI labs pay data companies, who pay a large pool of contract experts and keep a margin.
- AnthropicpaysMercorMercor's first-half 2026 gross revenue about $614M, with OpenAI and Anthropic named as main buyers
Buys expert training data through Mercor, one of its main suppliers (reported)
aiweekly.co Buys expert training data through Mercor (reported)
aiweekly.coTook a large minority stake in Scale AI
fortune.comMain human data partner, according to one analysis
sacra.comHas explored a strategic investment in Mercor (reported, no deal confirmed)
cryptobriefing.com
The openings
Gaps still open in this area, from ones a small business could take to ones only giants can play.
- Small business Expert data for local or regulated fields (NZ law, accounting, health) sold to labs or companies fine-tuning
- Small business Writing and checking the test sets used to grade models
- Startup money An expert marketplace for one industry
- Giants only Synthetic data at frontier scale
Revenue is counted before paying the experts, a few labs are almost all the customers, and Scale lost big clients within weeks of the Meta deal.
Sources: sacra.com, sacra.com, runtimewire.com
The map updates three times a week.
241 companies across 25 areas, 62 money flows and 89 openings so far. New research lands every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
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