Terac

Terac was founded in 2025 by Zac Baker and Jack Blair and is headquartered in San Francisco. It is a marketplace that helps AI developers, research teams and other organizations recruit, screen and pay people with specific knowledge. The company is young, but its public company information identifies its founders, funding, team size and San Francisco base.

Rather than employing one permanent crowd for a single type of task, Terac builds panels of verified experts. Researchers can look for people by profession, education, language, location or lived experience, while contributors apply to opportunities that match their background.

AI data training work at Terac

Terac’s current opportunities marketplace mixes AI training with user research and academic studies. July 2026 examples include Catalan text and voice work, an engineering task paid per completed deliverable, a multiday diary plus interview, and a paid health-workflow interview. These examples show the platform’s range: some assignments produce AI training data, while others pay you as a research participant for professional or lived experience.

Each opportunity has its own requirements and reward structure. Some are short studies or one-off tasks, while others involve repeated work over several weeks. Terac publishes the compensation, estimated time and eligibility information on individual listings, which is more useful than relying on a single platform-wide rate.

What is it like to work at Terac?

You participate as an expert or research contributor, not as a standard Terac employee. Most marketplace projects are remote, but they can be restricted by country, language, age, profession or another characteristic needed for the research. Your schedule is usually flexible within the project deadline.

Joining Terac does not guarantee work. Approval for one opportunity is project-specific, and being in the broader network only makes you available for future matches. A project can close when it reaches its target number of participants, so an application may remain pending or be declined even when your profile is genuine.

Payment can be hourly, per completed task or a fixed study reward, and Terac displays that unit on the opportunity. Earnings are released through its payout provider after the project owner approves completion. Because studies and expert panels close when they reach their target, the live listing is also the best evidence that an opportunity still has capacity.

Application process at Terac

You first create an account and complete a profile that explains your education, work history, languages and specialist knowledge. Terac’s application guide says a project may require government-ID verification through Persona. It can also ask for supporting professional profiles, although some linked accounts are optional.

After selecting an opportunity, you answer its screening questions. The screening step can be a form, an AI-guided voice conversation or a file upload, depending on what the researcher needs. Terac or the project owner then reviews your application. If you are accepted, you receive project instructions and can begin after completing any remaining setup.

The time commitment therefore varies: a basic written screening form may be quick, while a technical exercise or recorded interview can take longer. Passing one assessment does not automatically qualify you for every Terac project. It can be useful to keep your profile accurate and only claim credentials you can verify, because specialist eligibility is central to how the marketplace works.

Sources: Company website

Information last updated August 2026.