In a twist of fate, Wirestock, once a platform for photographers to sell their work on stock services like Shutterstock, has pivoted into supplying vast datasets of images, videos and design assets to the burgeoning AI labs.
The company’s co-founder and CEO, Mikayel Khachatryan, announced that Wirestock has secured $23 million in Series A funding from investors including Nava Ventures, SBVP and Formula VC. This influx allows them to expand their data supply business, which currently serves six of the largest foundation model makers.
With over 700,000 artists and designers on its platform, Wirestock has retrained teams to annotate and label data meticulously for AI use cases, transitioning from selling off-the-shelf content to custom requests. The platform now boasts an annual run-rate revenue of $40 million, paying out $15 million in the process.
The surge in demand for multimodal data mirrors other startups such as Surge, Scale AI and Mercor, which have gained significant traction on similar business models. Wirestock aims to broaden its horizons beyond image and video generation into audio and music datasets, positioning itself at the heart of creative AI development.
