Wirestock Raises $23M in Series A Funding Led by Nava Ventures

The company plans to use the funding to handle more advanced custom datasets, expand support for new creative formats and strengthen integrations so its data pipelines work more closely with the research workflows of its AI lab partners.

Wirestock attracts new contributors through email marketing, and referral programs. Photographers, videographers and illustrators can apply on the companys website, but they must first complete an unpaid test task to verify quality before joining the platform. Wirestock uses both AI tools and human reviewers to evaluate submitted work.

Demand for data supply services is growing rapidly as AI companies compete to improve their models. Companies such as Scale AI, Mercor, and others have grown quickly by providing large datasets, while newer startups like Micro1 and Human Native AI are also working with major AI labs.

In 2023, Wirestock shifted its focus to become a data provider for AI companies. It now supplies datasets including images, videos, design assets, gaming content and 3D materials to AI labs. The platform has also attracted over 700,000 artists and designers who contribute by completing data related tasks, similar to freelancers on marketplaces like Fiverr.

Wirestock is focused on supplying data for AI models used in creative applications, such as image and video generation, and is also exploring additional formats, such as audio and music.

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Freddie Martignetti, founder of Nava Ventures, said his fund was actively seeking startups innovating in data sourcing and refinement before discovering Wirestock.

Mikayel Khachatryan, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said Wirestock was transparent about its shift and allowed artists to opt out of its data supply business (in 2022, the platform had over 100,000 photographers). Khachatryan didn’t specify how many people switched over as data providers for AI, only saying “the majority” did.

About Wirestock

Founded in 2019 by Mikayel Khachatryan, Hovhannes Kuloghlyan and Vladimir Khoetsyan, Wirestock began as a platform to help creators license, showcase, and monetize their work across multiple channels. Over time, the company shifted it's focus after recognizing the growing need for high quality, human made creative data that AI systems cannot simply scrape or replicate.

Today, Wirestock acts as a data infrastructure layer for creative content, connecting photographers, videographers, designers, 3D artists, filmmakers, and musicians with leading AI companies. It enables the ongoing creation, curation, and licensing of multimodal creative datasets for training and improving advanced AI models.

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