State of Data — Sean Cai, Independent / State of Data
AI training data markets are permanently fragmenting as specialist vendors outcompete integrated giants like Scale AI
“Data is to the white collar revolution what coal and iron basically is to the Victorian age”
Independent analyst Sean Cai argues the AI training data supply chain is undergoing permanent unbundling, with specialist vendors beating vertically integrated players on sourcing, eval design, and reward modeling. Labs now mandate 20-30 vendor diversification because quality no longer scales linearly with quantity. The real scarcity and value has shifted from bulk annotation to expert-level data that lifts models from generalist competence to domain expertise.