Verida, a peer-to-peer network focused on enabling users to gain more control over their data, has raised $5 million in a seed funding round. This comes as concerns grow over how BigTech companies are utilizing user data to train their AI models.
Funding Details
- The seed funding round included participation from investors such as O-DE Capital Partners, ChaiTech Ventures, Simurg Labs, Gate Labs, HASH CIB, Bison Capital, Amesten Capital, and Mysten Labs’ Evan Cheng.
- The $5 million was also raised through community pre-sales of the Verida Storage Credit token.
- The fresh capital will fund the development of alternative data storage solutions aimed at giving internet users more control over their personal information and preventing it from being used to train AI models.
Verida’s Mission
“Verida is poised to disrupt the AI landscape by putting users back in control of their data, unlocking more secure, privacy-preserving personalized AI for everyone,” a Verida representative said in a statement.
The funding round brings Verida’s valuation to $50 million. The company’s goal is to offer decentralized storage and encryption for users’ personal information, with data being kept among numerous nodes managed by different network participants.
Concerns over AI and User Data
As the AI market continues to grow, there have been increasing concerns about language-learning models’ use of internet users’ data. Recent moves by companies like Meta and X (formerly Twitter) to utilize user data for AI training have heightened these privacy worries.
Verida’s solution aims to address these issues by providing users with more control and ownership over their personal data, preventing it from being exploited by large tech firms for their AI development.
