Wirestock, Formerly a Stock Photography Platform, Raises $23M to Supply AI Training Data

Wirestock announced on Thursday that it raised $23 million in Series A funding led by Nava Ventures, with participation from SBVP, Formula VC, and I2BF Ventures. The round brings the company's total capital raised to about $26 million. Wirestock currently employs 60 people and will use the proceeds to hire for research, engineering, and product roles while building enterprise software for AI labs to collaborate on datasets.

The startup pivoted to being a data provider in 2023 after previously helping photographers distribute and sell their work on stock photography services. It now supplies datasets of images, videos, design assets, and gaming and 3D content to AI labs. Wirestock currently provides multi-modal data to six of the largest foundation model makers, though it did not name them.

Wirestock has over 700,000 creators on its platform. Its platform has signed up more than 700,000 artists and designers who complete different tasks for data collection, similar to freelancers on platforms like Fiverr.

Mikayel Khachatryan, Wirestock’s co-founder and CEO, said the company was transparent about its shift to data supply and allowed artists to opt out. “The majority” of artists switched over as data providers for AI, he added. As part of the transition, the startup retrained some of its teams to annotate and label data in detail to make it useful for AI labs.

It also built sales and enterprise teams to pitch to hyperscalers and expanded creative assets in areas like 3D modeling. “I think Wirestock has a deep understanding of what foundational models and hyperscalers need in terms of multi-modal data to start creating more human-like systems,” Freddie Martignetti, founder of Nava Ventures, told TechCrunch.

““Initially a lot of Wirestock's deals were just selling what we had off the shelf like our existing library but then it turned into a lot of custom requests for content and data and that created new opportunities for creators and the platform just took off.” — Mikayel Khachatryan, Wirestock’s co-founder and CEO Wirestock currently has an annual run-rate revenue of $40 million. The company has so far paid out $15 million to its contributors. It uses email marketing and referral programs to bring in new contributors. Photographers, videographers, and illustrators can apply to provide data on its website but must complete an unpaid task as a quality check before acceptance. The company uses a mix of AI and human reviews to evaluate all work on the platform. Wirestock supplies photos, videos and 3D content to AI labs and is focusing on data for models that aid creative use cases such as image and video generation. The company is also exploring other modalities like audio and music. TechCrunch reported that demand for data supply services remains high as AI labs race to improve their models.”