- Vendors differ in model: finished data (Scale AI, Surge AI, Appen), expert time (Mercor), tools plus experts (Labelbox) and participant panels (Prolific).
- Reported revenue in 2024 ranged from about $870 million (Scale AI) to $1.2 billion (Surge AI).
- None of them licenses existing company archives as a core business.
Compared
| Vendor | Model | Focus | Published figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scale AI | Finished data | Labeling, expert data, defense | About $870 million revenue (2024) |
| Surge AI | Finished data | RLHF, RL environments, language | $1.2 billion revenue (2024) |
| Mercor | Expert time | Domain experts for labs | $10 billion valuation (2025); 30,000+ experts |
| Appen | Finished data | Multilingual collection and annotation | $113.4 million revenue (H1 2024) |
| Labelbox | Tools plus experts | Labeling platform and Alignerr | Not published |
| Prolific | Participant panels | Human evaluation and research | Not published |
Sources: SiliconANGLE, Wikipedia, TechCrunch, Staffing Industry Analysts, Labelbox, Prolific.
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Vendors create data. If you need real-world archives, see broker vs labeling vendor or request data.
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Questions
What does an AI training data vendor do?
It creates, labels or evaluates data for AI developers using a human workforce, usually to the buyer's specification.
Sources
- SiliconANGLE: Meta reportedly in talks on $10B+ investment in Scale AI (June 2025)
- Wikipedia: Surge AI
- TechCrunch: Mercor quintuples valuation to $10B with $350M Series C (October 2025)
- Staffing Industry Analysts: Appen H1 operating revenue falls with Google contract termination (August 2024)
- Labelbox: Announcing Labelbox Alignerr Connect
- Prolific: Human evaluation for AI models