Handshake AI faces $64,000 in contractor pay disputes

Nearly two dozen contractors told Business Insider their pay claims against Handshake AI over the past six months total about $64,000, with a single college junior saying his share is roughly $11,000.

The reporting centers on Joel Thomas, a junior who transferred to the University of Mary Washington after Liberty University steered students toward Handshake's career app. Drawn by invitations offering $50 an hour or $65 per task, he worked from his bedroom desk in northern Virginia; his dashboard earnings peaked at $19,000 before the company began disputing or denying his appeals and at one point told him "there was \"no record\" of his work on a major project."

The pattern Business Insider describes is one of mismatched meters. Disputes stem from differences between contractors' self-reported time and separate client-side tracking systems that workers cannot see. Five contractors on OpenAI projects had their accounts suspended without warning between late December and January, and four of the five were not paid for work they had finished. In November 2025, one contractor filed suit seeking $9,600 in unpaid wages.

Handshake, founded as a career platform in 2014, expanded into AI training in January 2025 and now routes work from its student and alumni network to clients that include Meta, Google, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Anthropic. In August, chief executive Garrett Lord said the AI unit had surpassed $1 billion in gross annualized revenue. Contractors are branded "fellows."

In October, after Business Insider sent detailed questions, the company introduced platform changes it said would improve pay transparency. The report does not say how many of the outstanding claims have since been resolved.