- $5 million funding round for Vana, a network for user-owned data, is led by Coinbase Ventures. Vana now has $25 million in finance after raising an extra $5 million.
- Leading this strategic fundraising round was Coinbase Ventures.
- Prior to this, Paradigm led a Series A round in which Vana raised $18 million. Web3 startup Vana said on Wednesday that it has secured an additional $5 million, increasing its total financing to $25 million. Vana’s goal is to create a network of user-owned data pools.
Coinbase Ventures led the strategic round, according to a statement from the business. Additionally, Vana has secured money from the well-known cryptocurrency venture capital firm Paradigm, which resulted to a $18 million Series A investment in the company.
The startup’s goal is to create a network of DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations, that will leverage blockchain technology to solve the shortage of training data for artificial intelligence (AI) models and provide internet users a method to make money. Vana is just one of several businesses trying to create a brand around the nexus of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
Any data that may feed AI models and aid in their evolution is significant, according to the co-founder and CEO of the firm, Anna Kazlauskas. However, private data from internet users of well-known social media platforms can be quite lucrative. Members of Vana’s network may aggregate data gathered by utilizing social networking sites like X, LinkedIn, and Reddit and then profit from those datasets by selling them to AI researchers thanks to DAOs.
Since much of the data that can be found by searching the “public internet” has already been ingested and put into AI models that are already in place, Kazlauskas believes that individuals selling their own data have a great deal of potential. She said that a major portion of the value of the data produced on login-required websites like Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, and so on comes from the fact that it is safeguarded.
Reddit DAO debut
Using the Vana blockchain, a DAO made possible for Reddit users to submit their platform history to a data pool established for revenue started in April. According to Kazlauskas, Reddit users with a high “karma” might make up to $400 or $300.
Vana intends to eventually include a network of over a dozen data DAOs, but as of right now, just the Reddit DAO is up and running because Vana’s mainnet has not yet been activated, according to Kazlauskas. She said that almost 140,000 people joined the Reddit DAO.
Ultimately, Kazlauskas thinks that anyone will be able to participate in the development of artificial intelligence through Vana’s DAO network.
She explained, “It’s about having a stake in AI.” “What we’ve seen too, from a user-adoption perspective, it’s much more compelling or interesting to give someone a stake in an AI model or a stake in this collective dataset versus ‘Let me just give you $20 cash for your data.'”
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
