Key findings
- 1
Appen reported $231M of revenue for FY2025, down 1.5% on the year before ($273M in FY2023).
- 2
Appen's New Markets segment reported $116M for FY2024, up 42.6% on the year before.
- 3
The largest private figure recorded is Mercor's $2 billion in gross annualized revenue (run-rate Jun 2026, stated by the company).
Figure 1
Revenue of the listed companies, by year
What do the publicly listed robot-training employers report as revenue, and how fast is it changing?
| Company | Year | Revenue | Change on prior year |
|---|---|---|---|
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | FY2023 | $273M | n/a |
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | FY2024 | $234M | -14.2% |
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | FY2025 | $231M | -1.5% |
Sample. Whole-company revenue in US dollars for each fiscal year as the company reports it in filings and results releases, to 10 Oct 2026; a figure as first published, a restated one only where no original is recorded.
US dollars as reported; a figure reported in another currency is listed in the data download and not converted.
A listed company's revenue covers far more than the work of the people who train and operate its robots; a parent's segment (Alphabet's Other Bets, which include Waymo and Wing) is in the segment figure.
Compiled by. RobotTraining.jobs Research, Revenue and Scale of the Companies That Train Robots, reviewed 10 Oct 2026.
Figure 2
Revenue by segment, full years
How large are the robotics and autonomy lines inside the listed companies, and are they growing?
Sample. Segment and adjusted figures exactly as each company names them in its filings, full fiscal years, to 10 Oct 2026. The share is the segment over the same year's whole-company revenue in the first figure.
Segments are as the company defines them and can be redefined; each row links the filing that states it.
Compiled by. RobotTraining.jobs Research, Revenue and Scale of the Companies That Train Robots, reviewed 10 Oct 2026.
Figure 3
Revenue and run-rates of the private companies
How large are the private robot-training employers by revenue, and how fast have they grown?
| Company | Period | Measure | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Handshake (AI business)Upstarts Media | ARR Oct 2025 | ARR | $100M |
| HandshakeTechCrunch | ARR end of 2025 (forecast) | Expected | $300M |
| HandshakeTechCrunch | run-rate early 2026 | Annualized revenue | $1B |
| MercorTechCrunch | run-rate Feb 2025 | ARR | $75M |
| MercorTechCrunch | ARR Mar 2025 | ARR | $100M |
| MercorTechCrunch | run-rate Sep 2025 | Run-rate | $450M |
| MercorTechCrunch | run-rate Sep 2025 | Run-rate | $500M |
| MercorTechCrunch | run-rate early 2026 | Annualized revenue | $1B |
| MercorTechCrunch | run-rate Jun 2026 | Annualized revenue | $2B |
| micro1TechCrunch | ARR Jan 2025 | ARR | $7M |
| micro1TechCrunch | ARR Sep 2025 | ARR | $50M |
| micro1Business Insider | annual revenue Sep 2025 | Annualized revenue | $60M |
| micro1TechCrunch | ARR Dec 2025 | ARR | $100M |
| micro1TechCrunch | run-rate Aug 2026 | Run-rate | $500M |
| Scale AITechCrunch | FY2024 | Revenue | $870M |
| Scale AITechCrunch | FY2025 | Expected | $2B |
| TuringTechCrunch | ARR Mar 2025 | ARR | $300M |
Sample. 17 figures for private companies, stated by the company or reported by the press, to 10 Oct 2026, oldest first within each company.
Run-rate, ARR and annualised revenue multiply a recent month or quarter out to a year: they are not a year's revenue and are not comparable with a listed company's reported revenue.
A data company's run-rate is usually gross: it includes what the company passes on to the people it pays.
Reported: from unnamed sources in the outlet linked, not confirmed by the company.
Compiled by. RobotTraining.jobs Research, Revenue and Scale of the Companies That Train Robots, reviewed 10 Oct 2026.
Figure 4
What the companies say about their fleets, workforce and payouts
How large do these companies say their fleets, rides, deliveries and workforces are, and how much do they say they pay?
| Company | Claim | As stated |
|---|---|---|
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | Countries | in over 200 countries |
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | Countries | in over 200 countries |
| AppenAppen | Countries | 170+ Countries represented |
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | Payouts | 59.7% |
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | Workforce | between 50,000 to 100,000 crowd contributors each month |
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | Workforce | crowd of 1 million+ contractors ... more than 170 countries and speaking 235+ languages and dialects |
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | Workforce | more than 1 million experts |
| AppenAppen Limited (ASX: APX), ASX announcement | Workforce | more than 1 million skilled contractors who speak over 500 languages |
| AppenAppen | Workforce | 1M+ Vetted contributors worldwide |
| Appen (CrowdGen)Appen | Pay rate | $100+/hr |
| Appen (CrowdGen)Appen | Pay rate | Up to $450 /hr |
| Appen (CrowdGen)Appen | Workforce | 500,000+ Contributors paid |
| HandshakeHandshake | Pay rate | Up to $125/hr |
| HandshakeHandshake | Payouts | $500M+ payouts made |
| HandshakeHandshake | Workforce | 188k+ fellows |
| iMeritiMerit | Workforce | a pool of 10,000+ active resources spanning 60+ countries |
| MercorBusiness Insider | Pay rate | an average of $95 an hour |
| MercorTechCrunch | Pay rate | over $85 per hour on average |
| MercorMercor | Pay rate | $109/hr |
| MercorTechCrunch | Payouts | more than $1.5 million per day to its contractors |
| MercorMercor | Payouts | $4M+ |
| MercorTechCrunch | Workforce | more than 30,000 experts on its roster |
| MercorFortune | Workforce | network of more than five million domain experts |
| micro1TechCrunch | Pay rate | Many earn close to $100 an hour |
| micro1TechCrunch | Workforce | thousands of experts across hundreds of domains |
| ProlificProlific | Pay rate | at least £9.00 / $12.00 per hour |
| ProlificTechCrunch | Workforce | a network of 120,000 human participants |
| ProlificProlific | Workforce | 300,000+ participants from our Global Crowd |
| Scale AIScale AI | Payouts | $1B Paid to contributors globally |
| Scale AI (Outlier, Remotasks)Business Insider | Workforce | over 300,000 gig workers across its Outlier and Remotasks platforms |
| Scale AI (Outlier)Outlier (Scale AI) | Countries | 50 Countries |
| Scale AI (Outlier)Outlier (Scale AI) | Payouts | $500M+ Paid to experts |
| Scale AI (Outlier)Outlier (Scale AI) | Workforce | 700K+ PhD, MS students onboarded |
| Scale AI (Remotasks)Remotasks (Scale AI) | Payouts | $15M Total Earnings |
| Scale AI (Remotasks)Remotasks (Scale AI) | Workforce | 240,000+ Total Taskers |
| TuringTuring | Countries | 140+ countries |
| TuringTechCrunch | Workforce | some 4 million coders around the world |
| Welo Data (Welocalize)Welo Data | Workforce | 500k+ Curated Experts |
Sample. 38 claims by the companies themselves, or reported, to 10 Oct 2026.
These are the companies' own figures, often marketing: a registered contributor is not an active worker, a fleet is not a count of the people supervising it, and a payout total is not pay per hour.
Compiled by. RobotTraining.jobs Research, Revenue and Scale of the Companies That Train Robots, reviewed 10 Oct 2026.
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Method and definitions
Annual reports, quarterly results and regulatory filings of the listed companies; statements and press reports for the private ones, each linked beside its figure. Every row links the publication it is taken from, with the figure as that publication states it; nothing is estimated or converted. Each figure states what it includes beneath it.
- Revenue
- What a listed company reports for the period in its filings or results release, in the currency as reported.
- Run-rate and annualised revenue
- A recent month or quarter of revenue multiplied out to a year, as a private company or the press states it. Not a year's revenue, and not comparable with reported revenue.
- Stated or reported
- Stated: the company or a filing gives the figure. Reported: an outlet reports it from unnamed sources.
- Scale claim
- What a company says about its fleet, rides, deliveries, the people on its platform or its payouts, as it says it. A registered contributor is not an active worker.
What this data cannot tell you
- Compiled from public sources: an event that was never announced or reported is missing, and private companies' figures are what they or the press stated, not audited.
- Fiscal years differ between companies, and a listed company's revenue includes work far beyond robot training.
- Fleet, workforce and payout figures are the companies' own and are rarely defined or audited.
How the job feeds are read and roles are classified: site methodology. How fresh, complete and consistent the data is, checked every day: data quality and coverage.
Editions
The live report is the dataset as last reviewed; new events are added as they are published. Each complete month is also published as an edition, frozen two days after the month ends, so a figure you cite from an edition never moves.
- Live dataAs last reviewed
Cite and reuse
Free to quote, chart and republish under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page. Live figures change daily: cite a monthly edition for numbers that will read the same later, or keep the access date.
Citation
RobotTraining.jobs (2026). Revenue and Scale of the Companies That Train Robots (live data, 31 Dec 2023 to 10 Oct 2026). https://robottraining.jobs/research/robot-training-industry-revenue (accessed 10 Oct 2026)
BibTeX
@misc{robottrainingjobs_robot_training_industry_revenue_live,
author = {{RobotTraining.jobs}},
title = {Revenue and Scale of the Companies That Train Robots (live data, 31 Dec 2023 to 10 Oct 2026)},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://robottraining.jobs/research/robot-training-industry-revenue}},
note = {Accessed 10 Oct 2026},
}Data: all figures as CSV (one line per value) or JSON. Every figure also downloads on its own. More open data: datasets and API.
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