Inside Human Archive: The Y Combinator-Backed Startup Recording Indian Workers To Train The World’s Robots

by · Inc42

SUMMARY

  • Human Archive, a Y Combinator-backed six-month-old data collection startup, has raised $8.2 Mn from Wing VC and angels
    Calling itself a human-embodied intelligence company, Human Archive has collected tens of thousands hours of worker data
    Data collection through blue-collar workers has led to intense scrutiny or ethical and privacy related challenges
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Human Archive is making waves in India’s startup ecosystem this week amid reports of its work with home services startups like Snabbit. And amid this spotlight, the San Francisco and Bengaluru-based startup has raised $8.2 Mn to build what it describes as the largest human sensorimotor dataset of its kind.

Essentially, the Y Combinator-backed startup is building the training material for robots and physical AI systems that frontier labs are racing to build and ship. The round was led by Wing Venture Capital, an early Snowflake backer and NVP Capital. The cap table also includes angels from OpenAI, NVIDIA, BAIR, SAIL, Anduril, Google, Mercor, AfterQuery (Founder & CEO), Meta, DoorDash AI Research, and Astranis, among others. 

Founded by UC Berkeley and Stanford University dropouts, 20-year-olds Rushil Agarwal, Raj Patel, Samay Maini, and Shloke Patel, the startup was thrust into the limelight with the recent debate around gig workers being used to train physical AI systems and robots. 

Earlier this week, home services startup Pronto was found to have run a pilot using worker tracking data to train AI models. Soon after, rival Snabbit was also found to have conducted a similar test in “controlled environments” in partnership with Human Archive, although the human services startup has denied deploying it in real-time scenarios. 

The Business Of Collecting Data

Human Archive’s business is data. The company has so far collected tens of thousands of hours of data. It wants millions.

“We capture human embodied intelligence, that’s what we do,” cofounder Rushil Agarwal told Inc42.