US data brokers sell ~$500M RL training environments to Chinese AI labs

According to a report by The Decoder published on 2026-11-11 at 21:51 UTC, a ChinaTalk investigation found that US data brokers including Mercor, Surge AI, and AfterQuery have sold roughly half a billion dollars' worth of AI training data to Chinese AI labs. Among that data, the report says, are the same RL environments previously built for OpenAI and Anthropic. At least nine firms are described as taking part, and the article states that existing export controls barely reach transactions of this kind.

This is currently the only public report on the matter. The available material does not say where the ChinaTalk investigation was published, does not identify which Chinese labs are named as buyers, and does not indicate whether any of the parties involved have confirmed or disputed the claims. No further developments have been reported since.