What the data shows
- 1
Internet majors and embodied-AI body makers (unnamed) appears most often as a buyer (11 records: mixed, egocentric video and simulation).
- 2
14 programs pay members of the public directly to record or produce robot training data, the latest launched 10 Oct 2026 (Mifeng Technology (觅蜂科技, an embodied-AI data services company)).
- 3
23 of 88 records state an amount; the rest do not disclose what was paid.
- 4
2026 has the most records so far (62).
Figure 1
Deals, paid programs and dataset releases
Who has paid for, licensed, commissioned or released robot training data, from whom, and what kind?
Base: 88 deals and releases dated 1 Jan 2023 to 28 Oct 2026, each linked to its announcement or reporting.
Most deals do not disclose an amount; a stated amount is shown as its source gives it.
Credit: compiled by RobotTraining.jobs Research, Who Is Buying Robot Training Data: Deals, Paid Programs and Dataset Releases, October 2026 edition.
Figure 2
Who is buying
Which companies appear most often as buyers of robot training data?
| Buyer | Deals | Kinds of data | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internet majors and embodied-AI body makers (unnamed) | 11 | mixed, egocentric video and simulation | 19 Oct 2026 |
| Frontier AI labs, Microsoft, Amazon and robotics companies like 1X | 6 | mixed, simulation, egocentric video and demonstrations | 22 Sep 2026 |
| NVIDIA | 4 | av driving data and mixed | 5 Jan 2026 |
| Encord | 3 | mixed and demonstrations | 22 Oct 2026 |
| Google DeepMind | 3 | teleoperation, mixed and demonstrations | 30 Jun 2026 |
| AgiBot (智元创新(上海)科技股份有限公司) | 2 | demonstrations and teleoperation | 15 Jan 2026 |
| Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) | 2 | mixed and demonstrations | 23 Jul 2026 |
| Build AI | 2 | egocentric video | 1 Mar 2026 |
| Figure AI | 2 | egocentric video | 25 Aug 2026 |
| Generalist AI | 2 | demonstrations and mixed | 4 Nov 2025 |
| Instawork | 2 | egocentric video | 16 Jun 2026 |
| micro1 (for an unnamed customer project) | 2 | av driving data and egocentric video | 4 Oct 2026 |
| 25 AV company partners (including Wayve) | 2 | av driving data | 1 May 2026 |
| More than 100 Ukrainian defence companies | 2 | drone data | 11 Jun 2026 |
| 1X Technologies | 1 | teleoperation | 17 Sep 2024 |
| Apple | 1 | egocentric video | 16 May 2025 |
| Aurora Innovation | 1 | annotation | 26 Nov 2024 |
| Autoware Foundation | 1 | av driving data | 13 Apr 2026 |
| Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics | 1 | teleoperation | 1 Dec 2025 |
| BitRobot Network | 1 | teleoperation | 25 Jun 2026 |
| Claru | 1 | egocentric video | 6 Feb 2026 |
| Cobot | 1 | mixed | 24 Sep 2025 |
| DaBoss.AI | 1 | mixed | 12 Feb 2026 |
| DoorDash | 1 | mixed | 19 Mar 2026 |
| Dyna Robotics | 1 | egocentric video | 23 Oct 2026 |
| Enabled Intelligence | 1 | drone data | 16 Jun 2026 |
| Fourier | 1 | demonstrations | 17 Mar 2025 |
| Galaxea AI | 1 | teleoperation | 30 Aug 2025 |
| Genesis AI | 1 | egocentric video | 23 Oct 2026 |
| Grab (GrabMaps) | 1 | av driving data | 6 May 2025 |
| Human Archive | 1 | egocentric video | 26 May 2026 |
| Humanoid | 1 | teleoperation | 13 Jan 2026 |
| JD.com | 1 | egocentric video | 20 May 2026 |
| undisclosed buyer on the Jiangsu Data Exchange | 1 | mixed | 3 Jan 2026 |
| Kinetic Blocks marketplace buyers (humanoid model developers) | 1 | mixed | 1 Sep 2026 |
| Kodiak AI | 1 | annotation | 9 Dec 2024 |
| LG Electronics | 1 | mixed | 18 Aug 2026 |
| 黎曼动力 (maker of the Riemann-1.0 embodied world-action model) | 1 | mixed | 6 Aug 2026 |
| Longyu Big Data | 1 | demonstrations | 15 May 2026 |
| Meta (FAIR and Project Aria) | 1 | egocentric video | 30 Nov 2023 |
| Mifeng Technology (觅蜂科技, an embodied-AI data services company) | 1 | egocentric video | 10 Oct 2026 |
| NEURA Robotics | 1 | demonstrations | 14 Jan 2026 |
| Niantic Spatial | 1 | drone data | 28 May 2026 |
| Objectways | 1 | egocentric video | 11 Jun 2026 |
| OpenAI | 1 | teleoperation | 28 Jan 2026 |
| Physen AI | 1 | mixed | 1 Aug 2026 |
| Physical Intelligence | 1 | mixed | 24 Sep 2025 |
| Reka | 1 | egocentric video | 6 Aug 2026 |
| Sunday Robotics | 1 | demonstrations | 19 Nov 2025 |
| Tesla | 1 | demonstrations | 19 Aug 2024 |
| Toyota Research Institute | 1 | teleoperation | 19 Mar 2024 |
| UK Ministry of Defence (for up to 12 UK companies) | 1 | drone data | 25 Sep 2026 |
| Ukrainian defense companies | 1 | drone data | 10 Aug 2026 |
| unnamed frontier AI labs and robotics companies (about 20 customers) | 1 | teleoperation | 17 Jun 2026 |
| Universal Robots | 1 | teleoperation | 16 Mar 2026 |
| Valeo | 1 | av driving data | 23 Jan 2026 |
| Volkswagen ADMT | 1 | av driving data | 8 Jul 2025 |
Base: Every buyer named across 88 records.
Credit: compiled by RobotTraining.jobs Research, Who Is Buying Robot Training Data: Deals, Paid Programs and Dataset Releases, October 2026 edition.
Figure 3
Deals by year and kind of data
Is spending on robot training data growing, and on which kinds of data?
| Year | Egocentric video | Mixed | AV driving data | Drone data | Teleoperation | Simulation | Demonstrations | Annotation | All |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| 2025 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 18 |
| 2026Small sample | 17 | 20 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 62 |
Base: All 88 records by the year each was announced.
This year is counted only up to the review date.
Credit: compiled by RobotTraining.jobs Research, Who Is Buying Robot Training Data: Deals, Paid Programs and Dataset Releases, October 2026 edition.
Robotics labs · Fleet operators · Data vendors · Research teams
Buy the data behind this report
This report sums up records we gather ourselves, day after day:
1,432 robot training roles followed, history included
Every role on 100 employer job boards, read each day since 12 Sep 2026: its pay, its place, and the first and last day it was up.
536 apply clicks over 28 days
Which robot training roles people really apply to, by kind of work, pay and place. The clicks happen here, so no one else can count them.
25 sourced industry datasets
Funding, revenue, deals, fleets, deployments and prices across the robot training industry, each record linked to the publication it comes from.
On offer
The raw records
Every robot training role we track: title, employer, place, kind of work, pay as stated, and the days it was first and last open.
A regular feed
New and closed roles every week or month, as file drops or through the data endpoints.
A custom cut
Any figure here by country, city, kind of work, vehicle, employer or date, or your own hiring benchmarked against the market.
Need the people behind this data for your own robots? (you contract them yourself) or (we deliver the robot data).
Investing in robotics, AV or robot-data companies? The Robot hiring radar is these records role by role, every day, as files.
Robot hiring brief: free, once a month
The robot-training job market in figures, on the first weekday of each month: open roles, what opened and closed, who added and who cut, and posted pay by kind of work. To your work email.
How it was measured
Company announcements, filings and reporting by major outlets, each linked beside its record with a verbatim quote kept in the dataset. Each row carries a link to its publication and gives the number exactly as published, with no estimates or conversions. A note under every figure says what it covers.
- Buyer
- The company that pays for, licenses or receives the data, as the source names it.
- Paid program
- A program that pays members of the public directly to record or produce robot training data (per minute, per task or per hour).
- Dataset release
- A large training dataset published or sponsored by a named company, kept because it shows who is building robot data at scale.
Limits of this data
- Built only from public sources. Anything never announced or reported is absent, and private-company figures are whatever the company or the press said, unaudited.
- Most deals do not disclose an amount, so the dataset counts deals, not dollars.
- Where the parties' roles are shared (a joint data effort), the buyer is the party that receives the data for training, as the source describes it.
Collection and classification of listings are explained on the methodology page. Freshness, completeness and consistency are tested daily in the data quality report.
Monthly editions
The live page shows the dataset as of its latest review, and new events join it once they are made public. Every finished month also gets its own edition, locked two days after month end, so a number quoted from it stays fixed.
- Live pageLatest review
- October 2026 edition (you are here)Will lock when the next daily refresh runs
Quoting this report
You may quote, chart or republish these figures under CC BY 4.0, provided you link back to this page. This edition is locked: its numbers will not change.
Citation
RobotTraining.jobs (2026). Who Is Buying Robot Training Data: Deals, Paid Programs and Dataset Releases, October 2026 edition. https://robottraining.jobs/research/robot-training-data-deals/2026-10
BibTeX
@misc{robottrainingjobs_robot_training_data_deals_2026_10,
author = {{RobotTraining.jobs}},
title = {Who Is Buying Robot Training Data: Deals, Paid Programs and Dataset Releases, October 2026 edition},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://robottraining.jobs/research/robot-training-data-deals/2026-10}},
}Keep reading
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