# US data firms reportedly sell about $500 million in RL environments to Chinese AI labs

> Original title: US data brokers are selling half a billion dollars in RL training environments to Chinese AI labs

- Source: The Decoder
- Published: 2026-11-11T13:51:11.000Z
- Bad Influence: https://badinfluence.news/items/wt4zz3jyyr9xu81u8bhp6zt02
- Original: https://the-decoder.com/us-data-brokers-are-selling-half-a-billion-dollars-in-rl-training-environments-to-chinese-ai-labs/

## Summary

According to a ChinaTalk investigation, US data firms including Mercor, Surge AI, AfterQuery, and Turing sell roughly half a billion dollars' worth of training data to Chinese AI labs. The report identifies at least nine firms and says the deals are largely outside export controls because RL environments remain largely unregulated. It urges the Bureau of Industry and Security to apply existing export controls to dual-use coding and biology environments.