# Jason Chong > Jason Chong is a software engineer and entrepreneur known for co-founding Mecka AI and Utopia Labs, where he served as chief technology officer. - Canonical URL: https://iq.wiki/wiki/jason-chong - Categories: People in crypto - Tags: Developer, Founder - Created: 2026-10-21T15:24:56.880Z - Last updated: 2026-10-21T15:53:30.211Z - Source: IQ.wiki — the world's largest blockchain and crypto encyclopedia (https://iq.wiki) --- **Jason Chong** is a software engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded [Mecka AI](https://iq.wiki/wiki/meckaai), a company that develops data infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. He previously co-founded Utopia Labs, a [cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency) and payments company acquired by [Coinbase](https://iq.wiki/wiki/coinbase), and served as its chief technology officer (CTO). Utopia Labs was founded in September 2021 by Chong, Kaito Cunningham, Alexander Wu, and Pryce Adade-Yebesi.[\[8\]](#cite-id-bzm62u9ppa)​[\[9\]](#cite-id-chvsbau5sp) ## Education and Early Career Chong studied at the University of British Columbia from 2015 to 2020, earning a bachelor’s degree in a combined major in business and computer science. His profiles also identify him as a graduate of the university.[\[1\]](#cite-id-58e8h6cgy9)​[\[3\]](#cite-id-7t98blvbl3)​[\[2\]](#cite-id-2cteqkc7gp)​ From September 2020 to September 2021, he worked as a software engineer at Microsoft. His software-development projects have included a Jupyter Notebook version of the Python Data Science Handbook, a Spotify dashboard, and a boilerplate for Node.js applications using Express, GraphQL, and MongoDB.[\[1\]](#cite-id-58e8h6cgy9)​[\[4\]](#cite-id-awss1s7d8n)​ ## Career #### Microsoft Chong worked as a software engineer at Microsoft from September 2020 to September 2021, which served as a foundation for his later work with [cryptocurrencies](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency). #### Utopia Labs Chong co-founded Utopia Labs in 2021 and served as its chief technology officer (CTO) from September 2021 to November 2024. The San Francisco-based company developed [cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency) and payment services, including a platform for converting US dollars held in bank accounts into cryptocurrency and converting cryptocurrency back into US dollars. During this period, Utopia Labs raised funding from investors including [Paradigm](https://iq.wiki/wiki/paradigm) and Kindred Ventures. In November 2024, the company's team joined [Coinbase](https://iq.wiki/wiki/coinbase) to work on on-chain payments following an acquisition of the team. #### Coinbase Chong worked as a software engineer at [Coinbase](https://iq.wiki/wiki/coinbase) from November 2024 to January 2025. His tenure followed the integration of the Utopia Labs team into the company in November 2024. #### Mecka AI Chong co-founded [Mecka AI](https://iq.wiki/wiki/meckaai) in 2024 with [Josh Gao](https://iq.wiki/wiki/josh-gao), Mogen Cheng, and Duy Nguyen. He became the company's chief technology officer in January 2025. Mecka AI develops datasets for artificial intelligence and robotics training, including human-movement recordings and multimodal data. The company was established to collect data about human activities and physical environments for use in training AI systems, including general-purpose and humanoid robots. Its operations include a network for capturing human movement and an automated pipeline for processing data used in large language models and embodied AI systems. ​[Mecka AI](https://iq.wiki/wiki/meckaai) introduced a points program in 2024 as part of its data collection activities. It later developed smartphone-based recording tasks and custom recording equipment for corporate training-data projects. Its data collection work includes recording and labeling anonymized videos of people performing tasks for robotics companies. Participants have also recorded everyday activities using smartphones and body sensors. The robotics company 1X Technologies was among Mecka AI's early partners. Mecka AI raised an $8 million seed round led by Neo, with participation from SV Angel, A-Star Capital, Cade, [Timeless](https://iq.wiki/wiki/timeless), and Offline VC. Its founding team included CEO [Josh Gao](https://iq.wiki/wiki/josh-gao), COO Duy Nguyen, chief product officer Mogen Cheng, founding engineer Kevin Hu, founding team member Eric Lok, and founding engineer Anthony Tat. In October 2026, Chong reported that [Mecka AI](https://iq.wiki/wiki/meckaai) had raised a $60 million Series B round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, M12, Qualcomm Ventures, and Samsung. The company stated that the financing brought its total funding to more than $120 million and would support the development of infrastructure for data collection and deployment in physical AI applications. Chong has also discussed collaborations with academic laboratories and industry partners involving the use of human-generated data for robot learning, including work associated with EgoVerse. In October 2026, a post concerning a [Mecka AI](https://iq.wiki/wiki/meckaai) partnership with the Concept team described an evaluation of five AI models on 200 egocentric video clips used for robot learning. Human evaluators assessed the generated captions, and GPT-6 Astra received a fully correct rating on 43.5% of the clips. Chong has also discussed the development of AI models and workflows involving human evaluation for tasks such as detailed video captioning. [\[1\]](#cite-id-58e8h6cgy9) [\[2\]](#cite-id-2cteqkc7gp) [\[3\]](#cite-id-7t98blvbl3) [\[4\]](#cite-id-awss1s7d8n) [\[5\]](#cite-id-ccx3zk48qx) [\[6\]](#cite-id-v96woeyv1z) [\[7\]](#cite-id-794ouhqpjt) [\[8\]](#cite-id-bzm62u9ppa) [\[9\]](#cite-id-chvsbau5sp)