Mecka AI has acquired a Vancouver startup to help it sift through “petabytes” of motion data to train robots.
**The news: **Toronto- and New York City-based physical AI startup Mecka AI bought Vancouver’s Docula early this year, Mecka AI told BetaKit. The companies didn’t disclose deal terms, but all three members of the bootstrapped Docula team joined Mecka. Mecka aims to collect physical data from human movement and sell that to companies making robots.
From the source: Docula built an AI data-processing engine for medical billing and auditing that could ingest records, normalize codes, run edits, benchmark fees, and spit out defensible reports instantaneously. “[Docula’s] product was in healthcare, so not directly related to what we’re doing per se,” Mecka special projects lead Mark Grinev explained in an interview with BetaKit. “But they are dealing with massive volumes of data.”
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Following the thread: Mecka wants to build “the data and deployment layer” for physical AI, whether that’s robots working on assembly lines, or general-purpose humanoids folding laundry (to varying degrees of success). By sending out iPhones and custom cameras to hundreds of thousands of “contributors” across 12 countries, Grinev said, the startup collects physical, three-dimensional data about how people move around and manipulate objects with their hands. This valuable data—which Docula’s acquired expertise will help process—is then sold to companies looking to train models and build robots.
**Final thought: **While China is the global leader, the US robotics market was worth $11.4 billion USD ($16.2 billion CAD) in 2026, a nearly 30-percent boost year over year, according to a study by the Robotics Center of Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, Canada lags behind peer countries on industrial robotics adoption.
Mecka seems to be following the money; it opened up a New York City office this month as it looks to expand its US customer base, though more than half of the 45-person team is Canadian. Grinev said most of the startup’s customers are US-based and that it’s seen exceptional growth in the past eight to 12 months.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Homa Appliances.