The AI boom runs on tens of millions of workers nobody has figured out how to pay, Papaya Global wants to fix that.

AI labs, robotics startups, and data-operations firms employ about 3 million data-labeling and reinforcement-learning workers, projected to rise to 35 million as LLM training expands. Most are contractors or gig workers, with 18–22% of enterprise staff already contingent and expected to reach 40–48% in Fortune 500 firms by 2027. Papaya Global says the industry must quickly recruit, classify, manage, and pay this dispersed workforce amid constantly changing local employment regulations, a task current employer-of-record platforms cannot scale.