Leading Physical AI labs currently acquire data with no assurances regarding quality, origin, or practical usability. Deepen Refinery offers a unified marketplace to address that gap.
“The top robots of the coming decade won’t rely on a single company’s data. They will be built upon data from many sources, and every contributor deserves compensation for their input.”— Mohammad Musa, CEO of Deepen AISANTA CLARA, CA, UNITED STATES, September 21, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Deepen AI has introduced Deepen Refinery™ and started accepting waitlist registrations from data partners and buyers, prior to an invite-only closed beta scheduled later this month. Refinery provides real-world data currently unreachable within other organizations and labs to teams building Physical AI, along with the necessary validation checks before training begins. Buyers can preview sample data, review permitted usage under each license, and identify which datasets underwent verification through Deepen’s pipeline. Data producers receive payments for every transaction.
Physical AI investment has reached unprecedented levels. By mid-June this year, robotics startups had secured $18.8 billion, as reported by Crunchbase—surpassing the $15 billion raised throughout all of 2025. The data infrastructure behind these companies has not kept pace. According to a June study from researchers at NVIDIA, MIT, and three other universities, even the most comprehensive accounting of publicly available real-robot data totals only about 20,000 hours. That amount is roughly equivalent to the private holdings of a single lab.
This inefficiency matters because aggregated data yields superior model performance. In the Open X-Embodiment study led by Google DeepMind, a model trained on combined data from nine distinct robot arms achieved approximately 50% higher average success across five robots compared to models each lab trained on its own data. The improvement occurred where individual lab datasets were limited.
“The top robots of the coming decade won’t rely on a single company’s data. They will be built upon data from many sources, and every contributor deserves compensation for their input,” said Mohammad Musa, CEO of Deepen AI. “Today, the industry treats physical-world data as a one-off project expense and repeatedly pays to re-collect it. Refinery transforms that data into a valuable asset, providing clear ownership, transparent license terms for buyers, and payments flowing back to the data producers.”
For buyers
When the beta goes live, the catalog will contain Deepen’s own egocentric video, motion capture, and vehicle data, plus datasets from partner organizations. [Each listing details how the data was captured—including sensors, location, and capture date—even when the partner behind it remains anonymous.] Deepen Refinery™ does not create its own foundation models, so it does not compete with the teams it serves.
For data partners
Data partners control who accesses their data and under what conditions. They establish their own license terms, can bar specific companies—including direct rivals—from purchasing, and remain anonymous to buyers during the beta. Data can be listed as-is or can undergo validation via Deepen’s pipeline. Partners receive payment on each sale and can monitor [requests and payouts] through a dedicated partner dashboard. Deepen’s own datasets go through the same pipeline and validation process as all other listings, receiving no special treatment.
“Across more than 200 Physical AI programs, we have observed teams spending money to collect data that already sits on someone else’s drive,” said Ali Peracha, Chief Product Officer at Deepen AI. “The buyer cannot locate it, and the owner will not sell without retaining control over who buys. Refinery resolves both issues. Buyers can check before collecting, and owners decide who purchases.”
Waitlist
The waitlist is live at https://refinery.deepen.ai, with separate queues for data partners and buyers. The first participants will be admitted when the closed beta launches later this month. Model developers can register now for access next month. Companies and research labs that hold Physical AI data they are not currently using—such as robot demonstrations, egocentric video, or driving logs—can contact the Refinery team directly at info@deepen.ai to discuss listing before the beta begins.
About Deepen AI
Deepen AI is constructing a new data economy for Physical AI. Through sensor calibration, annotation, validation, and Deepen Refinery, it assists teams developing robots, embodied AI, autonomous vehicles, and industrial systems.
Media contact: info@deepen.ai
Mohammad Musa
Deepen AI
+1 650-560-7130
info@deepen.ai
