--- title: "NVIDIA Plans to Invest in AI Data Provider Mercor, Valuing It at $20 Billion" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/296589240.md" description: "NVIDIA is seeking to invest in AI data labeling company Mercor, which would value the startup at $20 billion if the deal goes through. This move marks NVIDIA's shift from merely purchasing data services to establishing equity ties, aiming to accelerate its upstream data supply chain layout for the open-source AI model Nemotron. Business interactions between the two parties are rapidly deepening, with Mercor providing multi-domain expert evaluation data to NVIDIA" datetime: "2026-08-21T08:35:22.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/296589240.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296589240.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/296589240.md) generator: "portal-rs" --- # NVIDIA Plans to Invest in AI Data Provider Mercor, Valuing It at $20 Billion NVIDIA is seeking to invest in AI data labeling company Mercor, a move that would double the valuation of the three-year-old startup to $20 billion. This reflects the chip giant's effort to accelerate its layout for open-source AI models while **extending its investment reach to the upstream data supply chain**. According to a recent report by tech media outlet The Information, sources familiar with the matter revealed that NVIDIA has entered into discussions to participate in Mercor's new round of financing, with existing investor General Catalyst negotiating to lead the round. Last quarter, **NVIDIA paid tens of millions of dollars in data service fees to Mercor, and business interactions between the two parties are rapidly deepening.** **This potential investment comes against the backdrop of NVIDIA comprehensively accelerating its investment pace.** In the quarter ended April this year, NVIDIA invested a total of $18.6 billion in private companies and infrastructure funds, exceeding its total investment amount for the entire year of 2025. **If Mercor successfully completes this round of financing, it will become NVIDIA's first significant bet in the data services sector.** ## NVIDIA and Mercor: From Customer to Potential Shareholder The relationship between NVIDIA and Mercor is evolving from a simple procurement contract to an equity tie-up. According to reports, sources revealed that **NVIDIA has used Mercor's data to train its latest two Nemotron open-source models, and several employees within Mercor have devoted nearly all their energy to serving NVIDIA.** Mercor's core business involves recruiting human experts in various fields to use and evaluate the performance of AI models in professional tasks. The resulting data is used by model developers to enhance model capabilities. These tasks cover scientific research, law, financial projects, and even programming work for NVIDIA GPUs. **NVIDIA's Nemotron series is central to its open-source model strategy, aiming to compete with the world's top open-source models.** As NVIDIA increases its investment in Nemotron, the scale of its payments to Mercor has also risen, leading to a continuous growth in Mercor's revenue contribution from NVIDIA. Notably, NVIDIA is not Mercor's only data provider. The report pointed out that sources stated NVIDIA simultaneously uses services from other data providers such as Turing and Scale, and maintains an internal data team. In addition, NVIDIA also obtains valuable data generated when developers access Nemotron models through the OpenRouter platform. A person who participated in the Nemotron project stated that, **like many AI model developers, NVIDIA also heavily relies on synthetic data (i.e., AI-generated data) to train its models.** ## Mercor: A Rapidly Growing Data Labeling Unicorn Mercor's financial data confirms the heat in the AI data labeling market. According to a previous report by The Information, Mercor achieved gross revenue of $614 million in the first half of this year, a 70% increase compared to the full previous year, with full-year gross revenue expected to reach $2 billion. In terms of profitability, Mercor achieved a slight operating profit last year and has informed investors that operating profit will rise to $226 million this year, further jumping to $1.7 billion next year. Since the company pays approximately 60% to 70% of its gross revenue to contractors, its net income for the first half of this year is estimated to be between $180 million and $250 million. Founded only three years ago, Mercor has previously raised a cumulative total of approximately $520 million from investors such as Benchmark and Felicis, with a valuation of $10 billion in October last year. If this round of financing is completed at a $20 billion valuation, its valuation will double in less than a year. Mercor's major customers have historically been primarily closed-source AI model developers, including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The rapid growth of NVIDIA's business marks an expansion of its customer structure towards the open-source model camp. ## NVIDIA's Investment Landscape: From Chip Customers to Ecosystem Layout NVIDIA's recent investment strategy shows a clear trend of scaling up and acceleration. Since the beginning of this year, NVIDIA has invested $2 billion each in cloud service providers CoreWeave and Nebius, both of which are major customers of NVIDIA chips; it has also injected capital into Lumentum and Coherent, suppliers of laser hardware for NVIDIA networks, and provided funding to several small startups that rent or purchase NVIDIA chips. NVIDIA's investment logic usually revolves around its direct customers or the largest users of its chips. **The potential investment in Mercor is slightly different—Mercor is not a chip buyer, but an upstream data supplier for NVIDIA's AI model development capabilities. This layout reflects NVIDIA's strategic considerations in strengthening its competitiveness in open-source AI.** For reference, NVIDIA participated in Scale AI's financing round in 2024, when Scale was valued at $14 billion. Subsequently, Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale and hired its CEO. If Mercor completes this round of financing, it will surpass Scale with a $20 billion valuation, becoming the highest-valued company in the AI data labeling track. Risk Warning and Disclaimer The market carries risks, and investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it take into account the specific investment objectives, financial status, or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article align with their specific circumstances. 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