Meta has indefinitely suspended all work with Mercor. This comes after the artificial intelligence (AI) data contracting startup valued at $10 billion confirmed a security breach that may have exposed proprietary training data belonging to some of the world’s most prominent AI laboratories. According to a WIRED report, two sources confirmed Meta’s move and described it as indefinite. The story has created quite an upheaval in the world of AI research; other labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are trying to determine just how serious this breach is for them and whether any of their highly valued private datasets have fallen into the wrong hands. Mercor, the data broker sitting right in the middle of all data agreements between companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, creates specialised datasets by leveraging vast networks of humans and information that these AI companies consider some of their most private IP.ific methods used to train their models.
What the Mercor breach means for AI training data
Mercor confirmed the attack in an email sent to staff on March 31. “There was a recent security incident that affected our systems along with thousands of other organizations worldwide,” the company wrote, the Wired report noted. The breach could have thousands of victims, though the Mercor incident has drawn particular attention given the sensitivity of the data involved.While Meta has halted work entirely, OpenAI has not stopped its active projects with Mercor but confirmed it is investigating the incident to determine how its proprietary training data may have been exposed. An OpenAI spokesperson told WIRED that the breach “in no way affects OpenAI user data.” Meanwhile, Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Contractors staffed on Meta-related projects were not given a direct explanation for the pause. In a Chordus Slack channel, a project lead informed staff that Mercor was “currently reassessing the project scope.”Those contractors cannot log billable hours until, and unless, the project resumes, meaning they are effectively out of work. The report cited internal conversations claiming that Mercor is working internally to find alternative projects for those affected.
