Mercor, a Silicon Valley AI data company worth billions of dollars, is facing at least 7 class-action lawsuits alleging computer monitoring and facial data disclosure.

According to Perceive Beating monitoring, AI data annotation outsourcing company Mercor has faced at least 7 class-action lawsuits in recent weeks due to a third-party data breach. Headquartered in San Francisco, Mercor is valued at $10 billion and its clients include OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. Its core business involves hiring outsourced workers to provide feedback data for AI training. The leaked data includes outsourced workers' video interview recordings, facial biometric data, and computer screenshots.

A class-action lawsuit filed in Northern California on Tuesday accuses Mercor of collecting job applicant background check data and sharing it with partners in violation of federal regulations. The plaintiffs also accuse Mercor of monitoring outsourced workers' computers and sharing data with clients, using video interviews to train AI models, and training client models with materials that may belong to other companies. Mercor has denied these allegations, stating that the company complies with all relevant regulations and has hired third-party forensics experts to investigate the breach.

One of the plaintiffs, former Goldman Sachs employee David Bevvino-Berv, claims to have seen financial models and prompts during his time at Mercor that contained institutional data terminologies, real counterparty names, and suspected proprietary information from other companies. Another plaintiff, Thitipun Srinarmwong, alleges that a project manager encouraged workers to use real data from their jobs, only requiring anonymization, and when he anonymized the data to protect sensitive information, reviewers criticized the content as "too vague and too short."

Mercor required outsourced workers to install a screenshot software called Insightful, with outsourced workers stating that the software captures a screenshot every minute. Bevvino-Berv claims that Insightful captured screens of about 240 applications, including his bank account and health insurance portal, without prior notice that the screenshot scope would extend beyond Mercor-related work. Meta has suspended its collaboration with Mercor and initiated an investigation. Mercor employed 30,000 outsourced workers by 2025.