Why Data Labeling Startups Are Paying HVAC Companies $150,000 For Data

In June, data labeling startup micro1 approached Robby Hogle, CEO of a heating, ventilation and air conditioning company in Troy, Mich., with a proposition: why not learn how to use AI in his business and get paid for it?

Hogle had already been doing some work for micro1 as a side hustle. Hogle, a former investment banker, had been providing feedback to micro1 on how well AI models were able to complete financial modeling tasks. 

Now, micro1 wanted Hogle to test how well different AI models did on tasks involving his day job, such as processing vendor invoices, filling out credit applications or doing payroll for the HVAC firm’s 14 employees. Hogle agreed. He now comes up with tedious tasks he wants to automate and ranks how different AI models handle those tasks based on factors such as speed, efficiency and accuracy. He provides those evaluations to micro1, he said. 

Hogle doesn’t know whose models he is evaluating; they are anonymized, though micro1 likely works with the frontier AI labs, as do other data labeling startups.