Article by Joshua Folarin, Isabel Glass, Ryan Engel
Aug 21, 2025
At Cade Ventures, we’re drawn to founders building the connective tissue of the future - the foundational technologies that make whole industries possible. Today, we are thrilled to announce our investment in Mecka AI, a company creating the essential data infrastructure to unlock the future of robotics.
The Dawn of a New Age in Robotics
The global robotics market is at a major inflection point, projected to grow to approximately $178.6 Billion by 2030. As robotic systems become more sophisticated, the industry is racing toward the ultimate goal of full autonomy. However, it's not the hardware that's holding us back; it's the data.
Training the advanced models that power humanoid and mobile robots requires an immense volume of real-world data - orders of magnitude more than what's needed for applications like self-driving cars or Large Language Models. To date, robotics companies have been forced to rely on a patchwork of inadequate solutions, from capital-intensive in-house fleets and simulators that suffer from a "sim-to-real" gap, to small, restrictively licensed open-source datasets.
A Market in Motion: The Need for a Neutral Leader
This challenge has taken on new urgency. When Meta acquired nearly half of Scale AI - one of the largest providers of AI training data - many top AI and robotics labs, including Google and OpenAI, began searching for an independent alternative to avoid competitive conflicts. That shift has redirected more than $300 Million in data spending back into the market, creating a clear demand for a new enterprise-grade leader.
Mecka AI: The Foundational Data Layer for Robotics
This is where Mecka AI comes in. The company is building the "Scale AI for robotics," delivering the massive datasets needed to train the next generation of autonomous systems. Mecka stands apart by owning the full data stack. They have developed proprietary capture hardware and a sophisticated, large-scale data processing pipeline, which together create defensible IP and allow them to scale without relying on third-party vendors.
The market has already validated Mecka’s approach. In the past six months, the company has demonstrated significant traction. It has secured paid contracts with leading robotics firms and is delivering its proprietary datasets to key partners, proving the urgent demand for its offerings among the world's most advanced AI and robotics labs.
A Visionary Team
Mecka’s founding team brings an uncommon mix of relentless hustle and unconventional backgrounds. CEO Josh Gao is a second-time founder who previously co-founded a ghost kitchen software startup (acquired in 2023). CTO Jason Chong co-founded Utopia Labs, leading it through an acquisition by Coinbase, and has deep experience building at the intersection of hardware, software, and crypto-enabled systems.
The team has approached robotics with fresh eyes - reading research papers, visiting AI labs, and quickly identifying the massive data bottleneck holding the field back. That outsider perspective, paired with an ability to move fast and iterate, has allowed them to design both proprietary capture rigs and a global operator network in under a year.
From recruiting baristas, cooks, and mechanics to record intricate real-world motions, to securing contracts with leading robotics companies in record time, the team has shown the kind of urgency and resourcefulness that defines category leaders. In a space where iteration speed is everything, Mecka’s founders are proving they can set the pace.
Looking Forward
General-purpose robots alone could add over $40 Trillion to the global economy in the coming decades. But to get there, the industry first needs better training data - and that’s where Mecka shines.
Cade’s operator-led ethos showed up early in the partnership with Mecka. With a 10-day clock to deliver 1,000 hours of human POV for a top lab customer, we sprinted on a two-pronged playbook. First, we leaned on the Cade portfolio and our operator network - leaders who run businesses with access to skilled teams and real-world environments - to capture diverse, high-signal POV across workflows. Second, we used our global relationships to source and mobilize hundreds of contributors in parallel, giving Mecka the raw volume needed to hit the deadline. It was a blast to roll up our sleeves and demonstrate the “by operators, for operators” muscle we’re thrilled to bring to our founders.
We’re proud to join Neo, A*, Timeless, Offline, SV Angel, Mechanism Capital, Framework, and Tangent in backing Mecka’s mission - building the foundational data layer for a new generation of intelligent machines.
Learn more at mecka.ai