- Wirestock raised $23 million in Series A funding led by Nava Ventures, with participation from SBVP (co-founded by Sheryl Sandberg), Formula VC, and I2BF Ventures.
- The company supplies image, video, design, gaming and 3D datasets to six of the largest foundation-model makers, per CEO Mikayel Khachatryan.
- Wirestock has 700,000+ artists and designers on its platform; it has paid $15 million to contributors and runs at $40 million annual run-rate revenue.
- The company pivoted from a stock-photography distributor to an AI-training-data supplier in 2023.
What Happened
Wirestock raised $23 million in Series A funding to scale its supply of multi-modal training data to AI labs, TechCrunch reported on Thursday. The round was led by Nava Ventures, with participation from SBVP (co-founded by former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg), Formula VC, and I2BF Ventures. Wirestock pivoted in 2023 from being a distributor of stock photography to being a data provider, and now supplies datasets of images, videos, design assets, and gaming and 3D content to AI labs.
Why It Matters
Wirestock is part of a fast-growing category of creator-side AI training-data suppliers. The category competes with Scale AI’s data-labelling pipelines, Surge AI’s annotation services, and licensing arrangements directly between AI labs and large media companies (Reddit-OpenAI, AP-OpenAI, Shutterstock-OpenAI). Wirestock’s wedge is creator-sourced, multi-modal data with a contributor revenue-share model that aligns it more closely with platforms like Fiverr than with traditional stock-photography companies.
The economic shift driving the category is straightforward: foundation-model providers have largely exhausted high-quality public-web training data and are now paying substantially for licensed and bespoke datasets. Industry estimates have placed total spend on AI training-data licensing at several billion dollars in 2025–2026, fragmented across many providers.
Technical Details
CEO Mikayel Khachatryan told TechCrunch that Wirestock currently provides multi-modal data to six of the largest foundation-model makers, though he declined to name them. The company has paid $15 million to its contributor base and operates at $40 million annual run-rate revenue. Wirestock had over 100,000 photographers on its platform in 2022 before the AI-data pivot; “the majority” of those contributors switched into the data-supply business, though specific opt-in numbers were not disclosed. The company built sales and enterprise teams to pitch to hyperscalers and expanded into specific creative areas including 3D modelling.
The Series A will be used to build out the data-supply business further. Khachatryan said early deals were largely off-the-shelf sales of existing library content, but the shift toward custom data requests created the larger commercial opportunity. “That created new opportunities for creators, and the platform just took off,” he told TechCrunch.
Who’s Affected
Wirestock’s 700,000-plus artists and designers gain a more capitalised platform for monetising creative output through AI-training-data contracts. Competing data-supply companies — Scale AI, Surge AI, Appen, Labelbox, Snorkel AI, plus specialised players like Stability AI’s data-supply partners — face increased competitive pressure. Foundation-model providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Mistral, xAI — gain another credible multi-modal data source. Sheryl Sandberg’s SBVP, a notable consumer-internet venture fund, signals continued interest from senior tech-industry investors in the data-supply layer of AI.
What’s Next
Wirestock plans to use the funding to scale operations and expand into newer creative areas. Nava Ventures and the syndicate are expected to be quiet on specific Series B timing or follow-on plans. The broader data-supply category is likely to continue consolidating; smaller boutique vendors may be acquired by larger labelling or distribution platforms. Foundation-model providers continue to balance internal data-acquisition investment with external data-supply partnerships, with the long-term mix still actively being established across the industry.
