Vana, a web3 startup that aims to build a network of user-owned data pools, announced Wednesday that it had raised an additional $5 million, bringing its total funding to $25 million.

The startup said that Coinbase Ventures led the strategic round. Vana has also previously raised capital from the prolific crypto VC Paradigm, which led to a $18 million Series A in the firm.

Vana's Vision

The startup has set out to build a network of decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, that use its blockchain technology to address a lack of training data for AI models while providing a way for internet users to earn income.

Vana is one of many companies currently attempting to build a business around an intersection between blockchain and artificial intelligence.

The company's co-founder and CEO, Anna Kazlauskas, says that any data that can nourish AI models and help them evolve has value, but private data from internet users of popular social media platforms can be exponentially valuable.

DAOs, part of Vana's network, will allow members to pool data accumulated from social media platforms like Reddit, LinkedIn, or X and then monetize those datasets by selling them to AI researchers.

"It's about owning a stake in AI," she said. "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.'"

The Reddit DAO Launch

In April, a DAO using Vana's blockchain launched, allowing Reddit users to add their platform history to a data pool set for monetization. Kazlauskas said that Reddit users with much "karma" stood to earn as much as $300 to $400.

Although Vana plans to eventually be a network of more than a dozen data DAOs, the Reddit DAO is the only fully operational as Vana's mainnet has yet to go live, said Kazlauskas. Approximately 140,000 users joined the Reddit DAO, she also said.

Future Prospects

Kazlauskas sees a lot of promise in people selling their own data because what data is available through combing the "public internet" has largely already been gobbled up and fed into existing AI models.

She also said that data created on internet platforms that require a login, like Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, etc., has considerably more value, in part because it is largely protected.

In the big picture, Kazlauskas believes Vana's network of DAOs could allow people to become stakeholders in the future of artificial intelligence. As the company continues to expand, it aims to revolutionize how data is monetized and utilized in AI, giving back power to the users.