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Updated October 2026

Questions, answered with sources

FAQ

Selling your company's data

  • Each audience has its own published rubric of five weighted criteria, and every sub-score cites the facts behind it. A score appears only when we can evidence at least 35% of the rubric's weight; otherwise the card says there is not enough public data. Commissions never enter the calculation.

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  • Yes, and in 2026 it became a real market. micro1 committed $1B over 12 months to licensing company data, Mercor and Polyshares buy Slack, email, CRM and ticket history, and labs are buying the archives of startups that shut down. Each buyer reviews with you what can be licensed and how personal data is handled.1,2,3,4

  • micro1 publishes a range of $100K to $2M+ per data package, and over $1M for unique data. Polyshares states a typical $100K to $2M+, and Nyne $100K or more. Mercor and Handshake do not publish offer ranges. For a sense of the top end, Google bid $10M for Spirit Airlines' archive against Mercor's $7.5M.5,6,7,8,9

  • Buyers want records of real work: Slack and Teams messages, email, docs and wikis, CRM and ticket history, code, calls, and finance and project data. micro1 lists SOPs, knowledge bases and project history; Mercor lists Slack, Gmail, Salesforce, GitHub and 100+ other tools; Nyne buys QuickBooks, NetSuite, HubSpot and Jira data.10,2,3,11

  • Most buyers pay within 2-8 weeks of signing: Mercor says 2-4 weeks, Cognor Labs puts its process at 3-6 weeks, and Polyshares, Ventra and Your Data Value 30 to 60 days. Some pay only after they accept the data: micro1 has 30 business days to reject a delivery, and you invoice after written acceptance. Offers usually come sooner, from 3-7 days at Ventra to 1-2 weeks at Polyshares.14,15,16,17,18,19

  • Yes. Wind-down services sell the archives of closed startups to AI labs, and SimpleClosure had passed 150 such deals by April 2026, typically worth $10K to $100K each. MIT Technology Review reported in October 2026 that labs are actively buying this data.20,4

  • Published ranges run from $10K to $100K for a closed startup to $100K to $2M+ for an operating company, with over $1M for unique data. Large archives go higher: Google bid $10M for Spirit Airlines' archive. Headcount, years of history and records that link across systems push the value up.20,5,6,21,17,22,9

  • Sometimes. micro1's company referral terms set a default 7.5% of the license price, Pewter pays us 10% of what a business it works with is paid, up to $100,000, and Polyshares pays us 6% of eligible deals. Handshake's $10K per company is a program we have not joined. The buyer pays the fee, not you, and no fee ever changes a score.23,24,25,26

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FAQ

Hiring a data vendor

  • A human data vendor supplies the people whose judgments, answers and corrections are used to train and test AI models. Some, like Mercor, sell expert work to AI labs at very large scale. Others, like micro1, also license operating data from companies. This site ranks both kinds for the reader each one serves.27,5

  • Mercor is the largest by reported figures, with a gross run rate above $2B in June 2026. Surge AI's 2024 revenue is reported at $1B to $1.2B, and Handshake's gross ARR at about $1.15B. micro1 reported a $500M gross run rate in August 2026, Snorkel $375M, and Prolific about $350M by an outside estimate.27,28,29,30,31,32,33

    Most of these are gross figures from unnamed sources, and gross and net revenue can differ widely. TechCrunch put micro1's net revenue at $150M-$200M against its $500M gross run rate.

  • Ownership is the first thing to check. Meta has held 49% of Scale AI since June 2025, which matters to any lab that competes with Meta. Surge AI says it has never taken outside funding, so no lab owns part of it. Ask every vendor for its owners, its SOC 2 report and its incident history before a pilot.34,35

  • Mercor confirmed a cyberattack on 31 March 2026, tied to the compromise of the open-source LiteLLM project, and several class actions were filed in the Northern District of California on 1 April. Mercor later called the affected data a very limited subset. No reliable count of affected people has been published.36,37

  • Mercor states a SOC 2 Type II attestation on its data page. None of the other companies in our current sources publishes one where we could check it. That does not mean they lack one: ask each vendor for its report under NDA, and treat a refusal as a signal.38

  • Meta owns 49% of Scale AI, under a June 2025 deal reported at $14.3B to $15B, and Scale's founder Alexandr Wang joined Meta. Reports say Meta's stake carries no voting rights. Scale said the investment valued it above $29B.34,39

  • Yes. Outlier says it is operated by Scale AI, and Remotasks says it is powered and backed by Scale AI. Both are worker platforms, so anyone working on them is working within the company that is 49% owned by Meta.40,41,34

  • For labs avoiding Meta's 49% stake, the largest independent options by reported revenue are Mercor (above $2B gross run rate), Surge AI ($1B to $1.2B in 2024, no outside investors) and Handshake AI (about $1.15B gross ARR). Turing reported about $300M ARR. Check each one's ownership, security record and pilot terms.34,27,28,35,30,42

  • DataAnnotation.tech is reported to be a Surge AI subsidiary, including by TIME in 2024, but its own website does not name Surge. We show this as reported rather than confirmed.43

  • On revenue we cannot say from public sources, because Scale AI has no reported run rate in our sources. Surge AI's 2024 revenue is reported at $1B to $1.2B, and it is profitable. Scale is the more valuable company on paper, at above $29B in its own figure after Meta's investment.28,29,39

  • No. Surge AI says it has never raised outside funding, and Reuters reported it as profitable with more than $1B in 2024 revenue. Having no outside investors also means no AI lab owns part of it.35,28

  • Mercor acquired Sepal AI, announced in February 2026 by its counsel Orrick, and Deeptune, reported in July 2026 by SiliconANGLE. Deeptune builds training environments for AI agents.44,45

  • Mercor passed a $2B gross run rate in June 2026, according to Dealroom citing The Information. It was valued at $10B after a $350M Series C in October 2025. Both figures come from press reports, not from Mercor's own filings.27,46

  • Mercor is about four times larger by reported gross run rate, above $2B against micro1's $500M, but it confirmed a cyberattack in March 2026. micro1 has no reported incidents in our sources and publishes its program terms in full. Neither publishes vetting or quality metrics, so run a paid pilot with both.27,31,36,25

  • Handshake AI is the AI training business of the Handshake career network, run as the paid Handshake AI Fellowship. Dealroom, citing The Information, put Handshake's total gross ARR at about $1.15B in April 2026, with the AI training unit near $1B.30,47

  • We cannot say yet from public evidence. Neither platform publishes standard rates, and our pay index from public job listings is not out yet. What we can compare: Mercor is larger by reported run rate, and micro1's referral bonus is published at up to $3,000.27,31,48

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FAQ

Working as an expert

  • The large platforms are real businesses with real revenue. Mercor reported a run rate above $2B, Handshake's AI training unit nearly $1B and micro1 $500M gross. Apply only through each company's official site, and check its incident history before you hand over personal documents.27,30,31

  • We do not publish a pay ranking yet, because we will only score pay from a public index of job listings and that index is still being built. Until it is published, pay scores on this site show as not enough public data rather than a guess.

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  • Yes, Mercor is a large, funded company: it was valued at $10B in October 2025 and reported a gross run rate above $2B in June 2026. It also confirmed a cyberattack in March 2026, tied to the LiteLLM compromise, and several class actions followed.46,27,36,37

  • Mercor pays 20% of what the person you refer earns, up to a cap that its referrals page puts between $250 and $15,000 per referral depending on the role. The bonus comes from Mercor, not from the person you refer.49

  • Yes, micro1 is a large, funded company. It raised $100M+ at a $4B valuation in September 2026 and reported a $500M gross run rate in August 2026. It also runs a talent referral program paying up to $3,000 per successful referral, which is published on its own site.50,31,48

  • Yes. Outlier is operated by Scale AI, one of the best known AI data companies, which Meta part-owns at 49%. It runs a contributor referral program, though it does not publish the bonus amount.40,34,51

  • Handshake pays 10% of the referred fellow's hourly rate, for up to 40 hours, over 6 months. At $50 an hour that is 0.10 x 50 x 40 = $200 at most per referral.47

FAQ

About this site

  • No. No company can pay to be listed, to move up, or to change a score. Some companies run referral programs that may pay us when a reader we send signs a deal, and we disclose each one by name. The ranking is calculated from sourced facts before any commission is considered, and commissions are never an input.

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Glossary

Terms we use

Terms we use the same way across this site. Each links to the page that defines it.

Company data partnership
A deal in which an AI company or data buyer pays a business to license copies of its internal work records, such as emails, chat messages, documents and job files, to train or test AI, while the business keeps its originals and its company.
AI data payout
The money a business receives for licensing its internal records, such as emails, documents, tickets and job files, to an AI company or data buyer, before any broker's or marketplace's fee is taken off.
Data licensing for small business
Licensing copies of a small or mid-sized business's everyday work records, such as emails, job files, quotes and SOPs, to AI data buyers for a fee, while the owner keeps the business and the original records.

Sources (51)

  1. 1.The Next Web, published 9 Oct 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  2. 2.Mercor Data page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  3. 3.Polyshares website. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  4. 4.MIT Technology Review, published 13 Oct 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  5. 5.micro1 company referral page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  6. 6.Polyshares website. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  7. 7.Nyne sell-company-data page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  8. 8.Mercor Data page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  9. 9.Bloomberg Law, published 17 Aug 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  10. 10.beri.net, published 10 Oct 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  11. 11.Nyne sell-company-data page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  12. 12.beri.net, published 10 Oct 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  13. 13.Polyshares website. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  14. 14.Mercor Data page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  15. 15.Cognor Labs manufacturing page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  16. 16.Polyshares website. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  17. 17.Ventra company data page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  18. 18.Your Data Value website. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  19. 19.micro1 Data License Master Terms, published 7 Oct 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  20. 20.Forbes, published 16 Apr 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  21. 21.Cognor Labs partners page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  22. 22.Jottings how we get paid page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  23. 23.Pewter partners page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  24. 24.Polyshares referral program terms (partner account). Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  25. 25.micro1 referral terms (updated 2026-10-08), published 8 Oct 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  26. 26.Handshake AI data partnerships referral page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  27. 27.Dealroom, citing The Information, published 6 Jul 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  28. 28.Reuters (via AOL), published 1 Jul 2025. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  29. 29.Forbes. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  30. 30.Dealroom, citing The Information, published 14 Apr 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  31. 31.TechCrunch, published 20 Aug 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  32. 32.SiliconANGLE, published 22 Sep 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  33. 33.Sacra (estimate), published 19 May 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  34. 34.TechCrunch, published 13 Jun 2025. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  35. 35.Forbes. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  36. 36.TechCrunch, published 31 Mar 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  37. 37.HR Dive, published 13 Apr 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  38. 38.Mercor Data page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  39. 39.Scale AI blog, published 12 Jun 2025. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  40. 40.Outlier website. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  41. 41.Remotasks website. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  42. 42.TechCrunch, published 6 Mar 2025. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  43. 43.TIME, published 2 Apr 2024. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  44. 44.Orrick (Mercor's counsel), published 6 Feb 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  45. 45.SiliconANGLE, published 9 Jul 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  46. 46.TechCrunch, published 27 Oct 2025. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  47. 47.Handshake AI Fellowship referral terms. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  48. 48.micro1 referral program page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  49. 49.Mercor referrals page. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.
  50. 50.Forbes, published 22 Sep 2026. Accessed 14 Oct 2026.
  51. 51.Outlier blog. Accessed 14 Oct 2026. Company's own claim.