Mecka AI raises $60M funding

Mecka AI has raised $60 million to expand the software and data infrastructure it says robot companies need to train and deploy physical AI systems in real-world settings. The New York company disclosed the financing on June 1, with chief executive Josh Gao outlining plans to spend the money on engineering, hiring and production infrastructure. The financing comes as robotics startups and industrial groups push beyond demos and into commercial deployments that require more data collection, model training and field support. Framework Ventures led the funding, according to company statements and investor accounts. ### What exactly did Mecka raise? The $60 million total spans two financings, not a single new round. Fortune reported that Mecka closed a $25 million Series A in November and later added a $35 million follow-on investment, bringing the total disclosed amount to $60 million. Framework Ventures led both financings, according to the report. (finance.yahoo.com) Additional investors included Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, Kindred Ventures and Ted Xiao, according to deal summaries that cited the Fortune report. Gao declined to disclose the valuation, Fortune said. ### What does Mecka say it actually does? Mecka describes itself as “data infrastructure for Physical AI” on its website. (finance.yahoo.com) The company says it helps machines “learn to perceive, act, and work in the real world,” positioning itself as a supplier of the data and deployment layer behind robot systems rather than as a robot manufacturer. Cade Ventures, an earlier investor, said in an August 2025 post that Mecka was building “the essential data infrastructure” for robotics and had developed proprietary capture hardware and a large-scale data processing pipeline. (finance.yahoo.com) That investor post also said Mecka had secured paid contracts with robotics firms and was delivering datasets to partners. (mecka.ai) ### How is Mecka collecting robotics training data? Fortune reported that Mecka trains robots with human data sourced from body sensors and iPhones. The company’s approach centers on capturing human motion and activity, then structuring that material into datasets that can be used to train robotics models. (cadeventure.com) Third-party company profiles describe Mecka’s product in similar terms, saying it captures real-world human activity and turns raw sensor and video data into multimodal datasets for robotics, world models and digital twins. Those descriptions align with the company’s own positioning, though they come from outside sources. ### Who is running the company? (finance.yahoo.com) Josh Gao is Mecka’s chief executive, and the company is based in New York City, according to Fortune and company profiles. Fortune said Gao previously co-founded a restaurant payments technology startup that was sold in 2023. Cade Ventures identified Jason Chong as Mecka’s chief technology officer and said he previously co-founded Utopia Labs, which was acquired by Coinbase. (messari.io) The investor post also named Mogen Cheng and Duy Nguyen as co-founders. ### Where does the money go next? Josh Gao said on X that the new capital will fund “high-integrity engineering,” team expansion, production infrastructure and scaling across verticals for robots deployed worldwide, according to the social briefing provided for this story. (finance.yahoo.com) That lines up with Mecka’s pitch that robotics customers need infrastructure that extends beyond data labeling into deployment support. (cadeventure.com) Fortune also reported that Mecka projects a $100 million annual run rate based on signed contracts. The next concrete milestone will be whether the company converts that contracted demand into broader deployments with named customers, which it has not yet publicly identified. (finance.yahoo.com)