New York, Sunday, September 22, 2024 – Vana, a web3 startup focused on creating a network of user-owned data pools, has secured an additional $5 million in funding. This brings the company’s total funding to $25 million.
Coinbase Ventures led the latest strategic funding round, joining previous investor Paradigm, which led Vana’s $18 million Series A.
Vana aims to address the lack of training data for AI models by empowering internet users to monetize their own data. The company is building a network of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that leverage blockchain technology to facilitate data sharing and monetization.
Vana’s co-founder and CEO, Anna Kazlauskas, emphasizes the value of private data from popular social media platforms.
She believes that by pooling data from these platforms, users can create valuable datasets that can be sold to AI researchers.
Vana’s Reddit DAO, launched in April, allows Reddit users to contribute their platform history to a data pool for monetization. This DAO has attracted approximately 140,000 users, demonstrating the potential for such initiatives.
Kazlauskas envisions a future where Vana’s network of DAOs enables individuals to become stakeholders in the development of artificial intelligence.
By owning a stake in AI models and collective datasets, users can benefit from the value they create.
