Business
US data brokers are selling half a billion dollars in RL training environments to Chinese AI labs
The Decoder · By Maximilian Schreiner ·
The Brief
- A ChinaTalk investigation reports that US data brokers Mercor, Surge AI and AfterQuery are selling roughly half a billion dollars' worth of AI training data to Chinese labs.
- The sold material includes RL training environments that were previously built for OpenAI or Anthropic.
- The source excerpt is truncated and does not give the full count of involved parties beyond 'at least nine'.
Why it matters
If confirmed, RL training environments built for US labs are reaching Chinese AI labs, which may raise questions about data exclusivity, confidentiality of proprietary training setups, and compliance with export or data-transfer rules.
Who’s affected
- Teams building or buying RL training environments and AI training data
- AI labs that commissioned RL environments from data vendors
- #ai-training-data
- #reinforcement-learning
- #data-brokers
- #china
- #export-controls
US data brokers like Mercor, Surge AI, and AfterQuery are selling roughly half a billion dollars' worth of AI training data to Chinese labs, according to a ChinaTalk investigation. That includes the same RL environments previously built for OpenAI or Anthropic. At least nine…