TechCrunch reported Human Archive was rejected by Pronto and Urban Company for collaboration, and that Snabbit discussions also fell apart.
SourceMultimodal data provider for robotics learning
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Human Archive is a YC-backed robotics data lab that archives the physical world by collecting, synchronizing, labeling, and selling multimodal human-embodiment data for robotics and world-model teams. Public sources describe it as a multimodal data provider for robotics/world modeling with a 4-founder core team, a broader 10-20 / ~19-person footprint, and operations split across San Francisco and India (with a hardware lab in Shenzhen mentioned publicly).
Primary product
Multimodal robotics datasets and data-collection infrastructure for embodied AI
Founded
2026
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States
Team size
10-20
Industry
Robotics Engineering
Sub-industry
Multimodal data provider for robotics and world modeling
Offices
11 jobs at Human Archive
Business model
Stage
seed
Total raised
$8.3M
Latest round
Seed · May 2026
Latest amount
$8.2M
Leadership
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CTO
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Investors
Mission-driven, technical, and very fast-moving. Public posts and job descriptions emphasize lean ownership, distributed execution, hands-on hardware/software work, and an intense pace (including seven-day workweeks in one founder post).
Visa sponsorship
Limited
Compensation
Public postings show a Head of Engineering role at $140K-$210K plus 0.25%-2.0% equity, a Firmware Engineer role at ₹2.2M-₹3.5M INR, and other India-based roles roughly in the ₹1.25M-₹4M INR range. Some roles require a U.S. citizen or U.S. visa; other roles explicitly do not.
Pricing
Undisclosed publicly; evidence suggests dataset sales/licensing plus access to a researcher dashboard and samples.
Differentiators
Technology
Customers
Competitors
Estimated revenue
≈$48.5M-$193.8M annually (StartupHub estimate; 44% confidence)
TechCrunch reported Human Archive was rejected by Pronto and Urban Company for collaboration, and that Snabbit discussions also fell apart.
SourceTechCrunch reported public scrutiny around worker consent and pay; the article said workers were paid a $1/hour base rate and noted government inquiries into consent mechanisms, while the company said it complies with India’s DPDP Act.
SourceFinSMEs · Jun 2026
Summarized the seed round, San Francisco base, and plans to expand engineering, hardware, and operations teams.
The AI Insider · May 2026
Reported the funding round, the multimodal wearable-data approach, and the company’s expansion across hardware, software, and operations.
SiliconANGLE · May 2026
Covered the $8.2M seed round and noted that the company sources data via gig-economy partners and sells it to AI developers.
TechCrunch · May 2026
Reported Human Archive’s $8.2M seed raise and described its India-heavy data-collection model, customer-partner challenges, and ethics/consent scrutiny.
Inc42 · May 2026
Covered the round, the company’s robotics-training-data thesis, and the broader controversy around worker tracking for physical-AI data collection.