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Protege Secures $25 Million to Propel AI Data Platform Expansion

In a significant development for the artificial intelligence sector, Protege, an innovative platform aimed at facilitating secure access to proprietary training data, has announced the completion of a $25 million Series A funding round. This investment is expected to bolster the company's capabilities in bridging the gap between data ownership and AI development, a challenge that has long hindered progress in the field.

Funding Details and Key Players

The funding round was spearheaded by Footwork, with additional contributions from prominent investors such as CRV, Bloomberg Beta, Flex Capital, and Liquid 2 Ventures. Bobby Samuels, CEO and Co-Founder of Protege, highlighted the pivotal role that training data plays in advancing AI technologies. "Access to the right training data continues to be the biggest bottleneck to AI's progress," he explained. With this new influx of capital, Protege aims to enhance its product offerings while fostering partnerships with organizations that are at the forefront of AI innovation.

A Growing Need for AI Training Data

Protege's initiative stems from the recognition that the upcoming breakthroughs in AI will rely heavily on enabling data holders to grant controlled and secure access to their proprietary datasets. Established only recently, Protege has already assembled a considerable network of over 100 data partners, particularly within the healthcare and media industries. The platform boasts an impressive collection of training data, offering access to more than 300,000 hours of video, over 500,000 hours of audio content, large volumes of clinical notes, and a wealth of medical images.

Earlier in August, Protege took a significant step by launching two new service verticals, focusing on Audio & Speech, and Motion Capture, to expand its offerings and assist developers in creating richer AI models. These expansions reflect the company’s commitment to addressing the growing demand for diverse training datasets in various sectors.

Revolutionary Impact on AI Development

The expertise of Protege’s founders—Bobby Samuels, Travis May, Chief Scientific Officer Engy Ziedan, and CTO Richard Ho—has been instrumental in constructing a platform that prioritizes safety and compliance while navigating the complexities of data fragmentation. This approach allows AI builders to source hard-to-find data that is crucial for developing efficient models.

“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,” indicated Travis May. By timely unlocking this vital data, Protege believes it can drastically accelerate the pace of AI innovation.

Having achieved a remarkable 20-fold business growth during 2025, the company is poised to utilize its Series A funding to enhance product development further, venture into new business verticals, and strengthen collaborative ties with enterprise clients and data partners.

A Bright Future Ahead

"We’re thrilled to back Protege in their mission to become the connective tissue between proprietary data and cutting-edge AI," commented Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Co-Founder and General Partner at Footwork. He emphasized the company’s impressive traction in healthcare, media, and frontier AI labs, asserting that as more organizations pursue the creation of AI products rooted in real-world data, Protege’s platform will play a critical role in ensuring safety and scalability in AI development.

Through this funding, Protege not only positions itself to advance its technology but also reinforces the belief that the convergence of proprietary data ownership and AI will lead to substantial advancements in the field.

To learn more about Protege and its mission to revolutionize AI training data, visit www.withprotege.ai.