SignSplit launches with $400M at a $1B valuation to pay people for AI training data

SignSplit, a public benefit corporation, launched with $400 million in funding from W Group, valuing it at $1 billion on day one. The company's premise is 'signed data': cryptographically attributable contributions that let individuals prove their data was used in AI training and get paid for it.

The model inverts the dominant approach of scraping the open web and licensing in bulk from publishers. Instead, SignSplit is positioning itself as an intermediary that tracks provenance at the individual level and routes compensation back to contributors.

The timing tracks with a broader provenance push. OpenAI is rolling out EU text watermarking this week, and ChatGPT drew criticism for adding real cartoonists' signatures to fake New Yorker cartoons. Attribution, consent and compensation are moving from activist talking points to funded businesses.

Skeptics will ask whether frontier labs will pay for signed data at meaningful scale when they can still train on public data, and whether a $1B launch valuation is justified before any marketplace traction. Watch for the first lab partnerships and how SignSplit verifies that a model actually used a given contribution.