Forbes: US Data Vendors Sold ~$500M/Year of Training Data to Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance
Justgototheeffinmoon · reddit · 2026-08-09
US vendors supplying training data to OpenAI and Anthropic are simultaneously selling data services to Chinese labs, Forbes reports.
Companies like Surge AI, Mercor, AfterQuery, and Turing sell approximately $500 million worth of training data and services annually to Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance. AfterQuery reportedly pulls over $50M in recurring revenue from Chinese labs, Mercor accounts for about 2% of a $2B run-rate, and Surge AI's CEO has traveled to Beijing to meet lab executives directly. Forbes cites internal documentation and audio, confirming this is an active, large-scale commercial practice.
Related event: Forbes: US Data Firms Sold $500M in Training Data to Chinese Tech(2 posts)→
More from Venture
- Don't chase every AI trend: Use AI to outcompete in a specific business model — eptwts · 2026-08-09
- Semiconductor Layer Hits $20T Market Cap Excluding Giants, Analyst Warns of Overheating — pdamodaran · 2026-08-09
- Domain Investor Rejects $2.5M Offer for Three .ai Domains, Bets on Larger Upside — IgorGabrielan · 2026-08-09
- Altman: Massive Inference Demand Will Fund OpenAI's Giant Model Training — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-08-08
- Indie Dev Post-Mortem: From Open-Source CLI to Paid Mac App — dotey · 2026-08-08
- Chamath to Stanford MBAs: Getting Capital is a Moral Imperative to Compete with Worldviews — damianplayer · 2026-08-08