Comparison
Enterprise data, or expert data.
The AI training data market splits along a line most coverage misses. One half manufactures supply. The other half finds it.
Two different supplies.
Firms like Mercor and micro1 built marketplaces for human expertise. They recruit specialists, match them to a lab's brief, and pay them to produce training material that did not exist before. The output is precise and made to order, and the cost scales with the hours worked.
Firms like Surge and Scale sit adjacent to that, doing annotation, labeling, and human feedback on material a lab already holds. That is preparation rather than origination.
Polyshares does neither. We license operating records that businesses already produced in the course of running, then clear and prepare them. Nothing is written to order and nobody is on a task queue. The supply already exists, and the work is finding it, verifying who owns it, and making it usable.
Why the distinction matters to a lab.
Commissioned expert material answers a known gap. A lab that knows it needs more clinical reasoning can pay clinicians to write it, and it gets exactly what it specified.
An operating record answers a gap nobody specified. It carries how a real business actually handled a decade of ordinary problems, including the wrong turns, the arguments, and the corrections. That texture cannot be commissioned, because an expert writing to a brief writes the clean version.
These are complements rather than competitors. Most serious buyers want both.
- Expert marketplaces
- Recruit specialists to write training material to order. Supply is created on demand. Cost scales with hours.
- Annotation and feedback
- Label, rate, and correct material the buyer already holds. Preparation rather than origination.
- Data marketplaces
- List datasets from many sellers and take a cut. The seller sits in a queue and competes on volume.
- Polyshares
- Licenses existing enterprise operating records as the principal buyer. Pays the company directly, typically $100K to $2M, with no fee and no commission.
What this means if you run a business.
An expert marketplace is a route for individuals with scarce professional knowledge who want paid work. It is not a route for a company that wants to monetize what it already has.
If your business has years of operating history sitting in Slack, a CRM, a ticket queue, and a drive, that record is the asset. Polyshares buys a license to it and pays the company.
Five questions are enough for us to say whether we are interested.
Questions
Questions about the comparison.
What is the difference between Polyshares and Mercor or micro1?
The supply. Mercor and micro1 recruit and manage human specialists who produce training material to order. Polyshares licenses operating records that already exist inside businesses. One is manufactured on demand, the other is found and cleared.
Is Surge or Scale a data lab?
Both operate in the same market at a different point in it. Their core work is annotation, labeling, and human feedback applied to material a lab already holds. That is preparation of data rather than origination of it.
Which kind of data is worth more?
They are not substitutes. Expert-written material is precise, targeted, and expensive per unit, and a lab commissions it when it needs a specific capability. Operating records are broad and unrepeatable, and they carry the messiness of real work. Most labs buy both.
Why would a company sell to Polyshares rather than to one of the others?
Because the others are generally not buying what an operating business holds. An expert marketplace wants your people's time. Polyshares wants the record your business already produced, and pays the company for a license to it.
Does Polyshares pay contributors by the hour?
No. There is no hourly work and no task queue. We license a defined body of existing material and pay the company a single agreed amount, typically between $100K and $2M.
Inquiries
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Five questions tell us whether there is a market for what your company holds. You will get a straight answer either way.
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