Less than three months after emerging from stealth, XDOF, a startup that collects real-world teleoperation data for training general-purpose robots, is in late-stage talks to raise a Series B at a valuation of about $1.2 billion, led by 8VC.

XDOF was co-founded by Philipp Wu (CEO) and Fred Shentu (CTO) in 2024, at UC Berkeley. TechCrunch reported on the startup’s $70 million Series A in June, with investments from Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and Spark Capital. XDOF wasn’t planning to raise again so soon after that round. But their rapid growth, with annualized revenue approaching $50 million, has prompted VCs to consider a new round.

The startup aims to build the data pipelines, collection tools, and annotation systems that frontier AI labs and robotics companies need, essentially acting as an outsourced data-supply chain for the robotics industry. This is crucial as physical robots don’t have the equivalent real-world dataset to draw from, making data collection a critical bottleneck.

To capture this data, XDOF combines remote robot teleoperation with human collectors who wear sensors to record everyday tasks like folding clothes and flattening boxes. The startup is partnering with UC Berkeley’s AI Research lab to release what it believes is the largest collection of high-quality robot training data ever assembled, dubbed ABC. XDOF is also planning to hire and train teams of data collectors worldwide, including teleoperators and egocentric operators who wear body sensors to capture movement data.

XDOF is competing with other startups like Mecka AI, as well as human-data platforms expanding beyond LLMs, such as Scale AI and Micro1.