Verida raises $5 million to protect user data amid rise in generative AI
Quick Take
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Verida has raised $5 million in a seed funding round that included participation from O-DE Capital Partners, ChaiTech Ventures and Simurg Labs, among other investors.
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The peer-to-peer network aims to enable users to gain more control over their own data, as BigTech companies attempt to utilize user data to train their AI models.
DePIN network developer Verida has raised $5 million "to address the growing concerns over user data privacy in the age of Big Tech AI."
The seed funding round included participation from O-DE Capital Partners, ChaiTech Ventures, Simurg Labs, as well as 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 capital will fund the development of alternative data storage solutions geared toward internet users who want to prevent their data from being used to train AI.
“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.
Verida’s latest round of funding brings its valuation to $50 million.
The freshly raised capital will develop Verida's personal data ownership infrastructure. The network aims to offer decentralized storage and encryption for users’ personal information, with data being kept among numerous nodes managed by different network participants, the company said Friday in a statement.
As the AI market grows, so too have concerns about language-learning models’ use of internet users’ data. Earlier this month, social media platform Meta signaled it planned to utilize its European users’ data to enhance its artificial intelligence models’ performance. Meanwhile, X (formerly Twitter) last year said it would tap its users’ biometric data to train AI in an update to its privacy policy.
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