Mercor, a $10 Billion AI Data Company, Faces At Least 7 Class Action Lawsuits Over Computer Monitoring and Facial Data Leakage

According to monitoring by Beating, AI data labeling outsourcing company Mercor has faced at least seven class action lawsuits in recent weeks due to third-party data breaches. Headquartered in San Francisco and valued at $10 billion, Mercor’s clients include OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. Its core business involves hiring outsourced personnel to provide feedback data for AI training. The leaked content includes video interviews of outsourced workers, facial biometric data, and computer screenshots. A class action lawsuit filed in Northern California on Tuesday accuses Mercor of collecting background check data on job applicants and sharing it with partners, in violation of federal regulations. Plaintiffs also allege that Mercor monitored the computers of outsourced personnel and shared the data with clients, used video interviews to train AI models, and trained client models with materials that may belong to other companies. Mercor denies these allegations, stating that the company complies with all relevant regulations and has hired a third-party forensic expert to investigate the leak. One plaintiff, former Goldman Sachs employee David Bevvino-Berv, claims that during his time at Mercor, he saw financial models and prompts containing features like institutional data terminal tags and real trading counterparty names, raising suspicions of proprietary information from other companies. Another plaintiff, Thitipun Srinarmwong, stated that project managers encouraged workers to use real data from their jobs, requiring only de-identification, and when he wrote ambiguously to protect confidential information, reviewers criticized the content as ‘too short and vague.’ Mercor required outsourced personnel to install screenshot software called Insightful, which workers claim could capture screenshots every minute. Bevvino-Berv stated that Insightful captured usage screens of about 240 applications, including his bank account and healthcare portal, without prior notice that the screenshot scope would extend beyond Mercor-related work. Meta has suspended its collaboration with Mercor and launched an investigation. Mercor employed 30,000 outsourced personnel in 2025.