Human Archive raises $8.2 million to collect egocentric video and sensor data from Indian gig workers for robot training

Human Archive, a Silicon Valley startup founded by four Berkeley and Stanford students, raised $8.2 million in funding from Wing Venture Capital, NVP Capital, Y Combinator, and angels from OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Mercor, AfterQuery, BAIR, SAIL, Brad Boa, and Meta. The company has more than 1,000 active headsets deployed across multiple locations collecting first-person point-of-view video data.

Human Archive captures egocentric data using custom hardware including RGB-D cameras (color imagery paired in real time with depth information), tactile gloves, full-body motion capture suits, and wrist cameras. The startup has more than 50 different devices deployed to collect different data points, which it synchronizes across these multiple sensor sources.

The company partners with smaller home services startups in India, paying workers a base rate of $1 per hour for data collection participation, and offers consumers discounted service prices in exchange for consent to video recording. India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is investigating the consent mechanisms and data collection practices of startups collecting egocentric data through home service workers.