Wirestock has raised $23 million in new funding to expand its business of supplying multimodal training data to artificial intelligence labs. The funding round highlights the growing demand for high-quality licensed datasets as AI companies continue building more advanced multimodal models capable of processing images, videos, audio, 3D assets, and design content.
Originally launched as a platform that helped photographers and creators distribute and monetize content through stock image marketplaces such as Shutterstock, Wirestock significantly shifted its business strategy in 2023. The company pivoted toward becoming a large-scale AI data supplier, focusing on providing curated datasets for AI model training and development.
According to the company, Wirestock now works with more than 700,000 artists, photographers, designers, and creators who contribute visual assets and complete specialized data collection tasks for AI training purposes. The platform aggregates datasets that include images, videos, design assets, gaming content, and 3D materials used by major AI labs developing next-generation multimodal foundation models.
Wirestock co-founder and CEO Mikayel Khachatryan stated that the company remained transparent with creators during its transition into the AI data market and gave contributors the option to opt out of having their content used for AI-related data supply operations. While the company did not disclose exact participation numbers, Khachatryan said that “the majority” of creators continued working with the platform after the shift.
The funding round was led by Nava Ventures, with participation from investors including SBVP, Formula VC, I2BF Global Ventures, and several strategic partners. Investors believe the increasing demand for licensed and curated multimodal datasets could position companies like Wirestock as critical infrastructure providers in the rapidly expanding AI ecosystem.
The rise of companies like Wirestock reflects a broader trend in the AI industry where access to high-quality training data is becoming as strategically important as compute infrastructure and AI chips. As AI labs compete to build increasingly capable multimodal systems, demand for legally sourced and diverse content datasets has surged across industries including media, gaming, design, and entertainment.
Industry analysts note that multimodal AI models require enormous amounts of varied training data to improve reasoning, image understanding, video generation, simulation, and world-modeling capabilities. This has created a growing market for platforms capable of organizing, licensing, and delivering large-scale creator-generated datasets in a structured and commercially compliant manner.
