Mecka AI announces $60 million USD to power physical AI. Canadian-led startup aims to build "the data and deployment layer" for robotics. Mecka AI, which aims to train robots with human data sourced from body sensors and iPhones, revealed Monday that it has raised $60 million USD in funding. The news: The Toronto and New York City-based startup wants to build "the data and deployment layer" for physical AI. Mecka secured this sum across two previously unannounced SAFE financings: an initial $25-million Series A round in November and $35-million Series A extension that closed in recent weeks. San Francisco's Framework Ventures, which typically focuses on crypto, led with support from SV Angel and ex-Google DeepMind researcher Ted Xiao, now a founding member of Jeff Bezos' AI startup, Project Prometheus, among others. From the source: "Robotic deployment use cases are messy in the real world and not all tasks make sense today," Mecka co-founder and CEO Josh Gao argued in a news release, adding that the startup brings the "last-mile" data processing, models, and other capabilities necessary to make robots work in the field. Following the thread: Mecka and others are betting that video captured from a first-person perspective will help robots not learn faster and scale more efficiently. The startup currently collects this data from home settings, culinary work, chemistry labs, task platforms, metal fabrication, and leather shops. Its internal "video understanding lab" turns this raw footage into training-ready data and refines its computer vision models. Since forming last year, the fast-growing firm has raised $68 million, begun catering to multiple frontier robotics labs and Big Tech firms, and become - Mecka AI claims - one of the world's largest providers of physical AI training data. Though it is domiciled in the US, three of its four co-founders are Canadian and 40 of its 45 staff are based in Toronto. It plans to use this money to help more companies deploy robots. Final thought: AI claimed nearly half of all venture capital dollars invested in Canada last year, and global interest in robotics startups, humanoid makers, and companies developing physical AI that integrates into physical systems has also been heating up. Other recent Canadian beneficiaries of this trend include Vancouver's A&K Robotics and Montréal-based Mecademic. The Canadian Robotics Council has clocked "a rapid increase" in the amount of robotics startups being launched, both at home and abroad. Roborock Discover the next generation of cleaning innovation. Roborock redefines home robotics with AI-powered systems that sense, adapt, and operate seamlessly in real homes.

Mecka AI, a New York City based robotics data and infrastructure company powering the next generation of physical AI, raised $60m in funding

Shareholders in private companies are holding their breath as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic look to make big splashes in the public markets.