Maxinsights, a Santa Clara startup that pays people to wear cameras while they cook, clean and work, announced a $30 million seed round led by Peak XV on Thursday, Oct. 22.
Why it matters: Companies racing to build home and humanoid robots are short on real-world training data. Maxinsights is selling it, recorded in real kitchens rather than staged labs.
The numbers
- More than 5,000 contractors in six countries wear its head, wrist and chest cameras, Forbes reported.
- It has captured more than 2 million hours of footage and serves more than 30 customers, including frontier AI labs.
- Tola Capital, South Park Commons, INCE Capital and Alumni Ventures also invested.
Two new products
MaxLoop scores each clip as it arrives, so operators hear back the same day instead of in one to two weeks. The company says it processes about 450,000 hours of footage a month and has cut review costs by roughly 80%.
MaxGlove, built with Genesis AI, records how hard a hand grips and how heavy an object is, which a camera cannot see. The company is targeting 1 million hours of force data in 2027.
"Robots get deployed into real kitchens, not staged ones, and something unexpected happens every few minutes," founder and CEO Yuguang Yuan said in the announcement.
More on robot training data: SF startup Encord turns Jenga into robot training data.