June 2025

In the past few years, autonomous driving technology has moved from science fiction movies to reality, especially the commercial application of unmanned taxis (Robotaxi), which is quietly changing people's imagination of transportation. From Waymo allowing ordinary people to call a taxi in Phoenix to Tesla launching Robotaxi testing in Austin, vehicles without drivers have appeared on the streets of the United States.
This is a technological revolution, and also a comprehensive test of systems, ethics, and business models. This article will help you sort out the current status of global autonomous driving development, analyze the technical routes, major players, and key challenges, and explore how it can move from experimentation to implementation. Let’s read on!

In the past, when talking about the development of AI, people often focused on the models themselves: how powerful GPT-4 is, how powerful Gemini is, how eloquent Claude is. But in fact, the data behind these models is the key asset that truly determines how well they learn and how deeply they understand. In this data race, there is a company that plays an irreplaceable role: Scale AI
Founded in 2016, Scale AI focuses on helping companies "train AI models with data". Its core business is not to develop models, but to provide large-scale, high-quality and accurately labeled data processing services. This includes data labeling from images, voice, text, to self-driving scenes. Imagine it as a coach at a training ground: not the protagonist, but it determines the success or failure of the protagonist. Many top AI models, including OpenAI, Meta, and Google, have used Scale's data services in the past.
Meta recently acquired a large stake in this low-profile but critical company, triggering an earthquake-level reaction in the entire industry: Google hastily withdrew from the cooperation, and OpenAI said it would continue to wait and see. Today's article will take you through: Why did Meta spend a lot of money to acquire Scale AI? What market signals does it represent? How will it affect the future of AI?

In the past, starting a business was a big deal that required connections, funding, and long-term planning. But now, you may only need an idea, a cup of coffee, and a set of useful AI tools to start a small project, create a business brief, or even produce an early product idea. This change in threshold is changing entrepreneurship from "something that bold people do" to "something that curious people can also start practicing."
Today's article will introduce you to Mercor, an AI recruitment startup created by a 21-year-old founder. In less than two years, they raised $100 million, with a valuation of $2 billion, and have served thousands of companies. This is not just a story of "AI + talent matching", but also an example of entrepreneurship that combines technical sensitivity, business thinking and user insights. Today, we will start from five aspects: entrepreneurial background, product design, technical highlights, market strategy and challenges, and try to answer a question: Why is Mercor so successful?