Protege, the leading platform for AI training data, has secured $25 million in Series A funding to expand its secure data exchange capabilities, enhance proprietary data access, and strengthen partnerships with data partners across various industries.

Led by Footwork with backing from CRV, Bloomberg Beta, Flex Capital, Shaper Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, and others, the round marks a major milestone for Protege. Since raising $10 million in seed funding in 2024, the company has rapidly scaled, growing its business 20 times in 2025 and delivering tens of millions of dollars in revenue to its data partners.

“This funding is a major milestone that enables us to deepen our product and partner even more closely with the organizations shaping the future of AI,” said Bobby Samuels, CEO and Co-Founder of Protege.

Founded by Bobby Samuels, Travis May, Engy Ziedan, and Richard Ho, Protege connects data owners with AI developers to unlock proprietary data in a safe and compliant environment.

The platform addresses the challenge of fragmented AI training data by curating rare and high-value assets, including 300,000 hours of video, 500,000 hours of audio, billions of clinical notes, and hundreds of millions of medical images.

AI developers struggle with finding diverse, clean datasets. Data often remains siloed within organizations, making acquisition cumbersome and slow.

Protege steps in to streamline this via a platform that connects data holders and AI builders, offering easy, governed access to rich datasets, ranging from videos and audio to clinical notes and medical images. This approach bridges the gap between fragmented data sources and the needs of AI.

Scaling Secure AI Training Data Access

The addition of Audio & Speech and Motion Capture verticals further diversifies its proprietary data offerings, giving AI builders richer datasets for advanced model development. By simplifying secure data exchange, Protege enables developers to accelerate innovation without compromising governance.

“Access to the right training data continues to be the biggest bottleneck to AI’s progress. Protege was born out of a belief that the next generation of AI breakthroughs will be powered by enabling data holders to allow controlled access to their data safely,” added Bobby Samuels.

Organizations face real headaches from inconsistent data formats, evolving APIs, and mismatched schemas, often referred to as the “silent killer of AI.” These issues hinder the deployment of AI at scale, despite the availability of robust models. Protege mitigates these issues by offering curated, standardized datasets in controlled environments, which reduce integration complexity.

“The richest data in the world, and the most important information for training AI, sits in proprietary data sets: rich human knowledge is embedded in content like videos, news articles, audio clips, medical images, textbooks, and many other proprietary sources,” said Travis May. “We believe that safely unlocking this data is one of the single biggest opportunities to accelerate the pace of AI development.”

Fueling Growth with Series A Funding

The Series A funding will enable Protege to deepen its product development, expand into new verticals, and increase its enterprise reach. With over 100 active data partners in healthcare, media, and emerging sectors, the company is positioned to become a global leader in AI training data accessibility.

CEO Travis May emphasized that connecting AI developers to the correct proprietary data is critical for building “thoughtful AI solutions” that have real-world impact. As industries increasingly depend on secure data exchange, Protege’s model offers both compliance and speed.

Building training datasets from scratch is expensive and slow. Negotiations over IP, compliance, and technical integration can stretch over months or years. Protege’s platform accelerates this process by offering secure, compliant data access, reducing friction for both data providers and AI developers.

“The team has shown incredible execution since seed, with real traction across healthcare, media, and frontier AI labs. As more organizations look to build AI products grounded in real-world data, Protege’s platform will be critical to doing so safely and at scale,” said Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Co-Founder and General Partner at Footwork.

Follow USTechTimes on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin for in-depth news of market trends, funding updates, and regulatory changes affecting startups in USA.

We Recommend: