Meta paused its work with AI training startup Mercor after a data breach

• Meta has paused its work with Mercor and is investigating after a data breach, a person familiar said.
• Mercor confirmed to Business Insider that it was recently affected by a security incident.
• Mercor works with major companies by providing training data for AI models.

Meta has paused its work with Mercor and is investigating after a recent data breach at the AI training startup, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to Business Insider.

Mercor, which was valued at $10 billion in a funding round in October, works with major tech companies like Meta to train AI models with the help of thousands of human contractors and experts. Wired first reported on Friday that Meta had paused all its work with the company.

Meta declined to provide a comment.

Mercor confirmed to Business Insider on Friday that the company had experienced a security breach.

"The privacy and security of our customers and contractors is foundational to everything we do at Mercor. We recently identified that we were one of thousands of companies impacted by a supply chain attack involving LiteLLM," Mercor said in a statement, referring to the open source project LiteLLM.

"Our security team moved promptly to contain and remediate the incident," the company added. "We are conducting a thorough investigation supported by leading third-party forensics experts."