Josh Gao is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mecka AI, a physical AI data and deployment infrastructure company building the foundational data layer for robotics and embodied AI systems.

Josh studied Philosophy at Ivey Business School, Western University, and previously co-founded a ghost-kitchen software startup in Canada that was acquired in 2023, and a restaurant fintech payments startup.

Josh brings a contrarian, outsider perspective to robotics, having come from fintech and e-commerce rather than traditional AI labs, believing that real-world human motion data is the key to unlocking general-purpose robotics.

Under Josh's leadership, Mecka AI has raised $60M across a Series A and follow-on round from top investors including Framework Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, Nvidia, and Microsoft M12, and has partnered with leading humanoid robotics companies such as 1X Technologies.

Mecka AI surpassed $100M in annualized run-rate revenue in June 2026 and projects a $300M run rate by year-end, establishing itself as the Scale AI equivalent for physical robotics data infrastructure.