Mercor, Micro1 and Handshake are buying professional work records to help develop AI models, Wired reports. The push seeks real business workflows rather than simulated tasks, raising questions about employee privacy.
Wired reports that data suppliers are acquiring company databases and licensing professional documents for AI development. Micro1 uses purchased information mainly to improve its own AI models, but also sells data to large AI companies.
Mercor began as an AI recruiting company before identifying demand for better training data. Its chief executive, Brendan Foody, says expert-created simulations failed to capture the messiness of an operating business.
Foody says Mercor removes personally identifying information from the data businesses provide. A privacy expert questions whether anonymisation can fully protect people when unstructured records contain details about their health or family.
Suppliers claim broad relationships with AI labs, but Anthropic says it does not buy workflows from operating companies such as Wired. For businesses considering a sale, removing identifiers does not settle the question of employee privacy.
Internal work records are becoming a commercial input for AI development, giving companies another potential use for their accumulated knowledge.
Businesses evaluating data sales face privacy questions that suppliers' assurances about anonymisation do not resolve.
Wired could not verify Micro1's estimate of current annual data spending, and its growth forecast is a supplier projection rather than an established market outcome.
Written automatically by the Made in 10 Newsroom from the source above.
OpenAI has reportedly raised $11 billion in a new funding round at a $1.25 trillion valuation. The round remains open and could reach about $20 billion, according to Bloomberg reporting cited by TechCrunch.
