One of the biggest problems facing AI development and deployment today is the ongoing issue of data scarcity. As artificial intelligence continues to advance at a breakneck pace, the demand for high-quality, specialized human feedback in AI training is growing exponentially — according to some conservative industry projections, the global data collection and labeling market is expected to grow from $2.9 billion in 2022 to $17.1 billion by 2030. We believe that in particular, domain-specific expertise in data labeling and model training remains a mission-critical bottleneck, in particular for knowledge-based professional services fields like finance, healthcare, and law. Today, we’re excited to share that CoinFund has led Kiva AI’s $7M Seed financing to support further development of the company’s growing suite of data labeling, annotation, and RLHF solutions on a platform that leverages core web3 innovations to improve quality, cost, and scalability alongside preserving human involvement.

Enter Kiva AI

 

Kiva AI is initially focused on delivering next-generation human feedback operations to enhance AI quality while materially reducing costs at scale compared to existing solutions today. We believe Kiva can differentiate from a crowded field in several ways, including those only possible through leveraging web3:

1. Expertise-Driven Approach: Kiva’s platform is designed to match highly skilled domain experts with AI projects that require specialized knowledge. This ensures that data labeling and model training are performed by individuals who truly understand the nuances of the field, leading to higher quality outputs.
2. Scalable Global Network: By leveraging a global network of experts across various disciplines — from doctors and lawyers to engineers and linguists — Kiva can provide scalable solutions for even the most niche AI development needs.
3. Innovative Incentive Structures: Kiva will explore token-based incentives to motivate and retain their expert network beyond what’s possible in Web 2.0 solutions today, ensuring consistent high-quality output.
4. Cost-Efficient Operations: Through innovative use of web3 technologies and streamlined processes, Kiva aims to reduce operational costs meaningfully compared to traditional data labeling services, while improving net rater take home pay by leveraging on-chain tech including stablecoins.

The Importance of Human Feedback in AI

Even as synthetic training data becomes more prevalent, human feedback remains a critical component in AI development, because it provides context, nuance, and real-world validation that synthetic data alone cannot replicate. This is particularly crucial in specialized fields where errors can have significant consequences, or relevant data is not often part of the larger corpus of text most LLMs are trained on today, thereby leaving valuable insights on the table. For instance, consider an AI model being developed to assist in medical diagnoses. While synthetic data can provide a baseline, human experts — in this case, experienced physicians — are essential for labeling edge cases, verifying the model’s outputs, and ensuring that the AI’s decision-making aligns with medical best practices. Kiva’s approach to human feedback goes beyond simple data labeling. Their platform is designed to create a continuous feedback loop, where human experts not only provide initial training data but also validate and refine AI outputs over time. This iterative process leads to more accurate, reliable, and trustworthy AI systems.

World-Class Team

Kiva CEO and Founder, Ahmed Rashad, is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience across various industries. Notably, Ahmed recently grew AI development at Scale AI, where his team hired over 1 million human labelers across 73+ countries in under two years, during a period of meaningful revenue and valuation growth for the company. Ahmed’s experience at Scale uniquely prepares Kiva to tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities in the AI data labeling space. His deep understanding of both the technical and operational aspects of scaling a human-in-the-loop AI solution gives Kiva a significant advantage in execution and strategy, while also having pre-existing connectivity. As the Kiva team has grown, we are also excited by the high caliber of individuals deepening the bench, and believe that Ahmed’s founder-led sales approach could be a differentiator in driving future business leads, partnership discussions, and investor appetite.

Leveraging Web3 for Real-World Impact

One of the most exciting aspects of Kiva’s approach for CoinFund is how the roadmap seamlessly integrates web3 into a platform that is already a proven market in Web 2.0, enabling additional ways to carve out a defensible market share that we believe can continue to grow over time. Specifically, by incorporating token-based incentives and decentralized payment systems, we think Kiva will be able to:

1. Test novel and value-additive incentivization mechanisms to drive higher quality experts on to the network over time, unlocking value for AI customers
2. Reduce human expert transaction costs and navigate forex issues which currently add friction and cost to many global data operations today
3. Create liquidity to fuel faster growth and expansion into new markets and services, while also onboarding previously unaddressable data needs through structurally lower costs
4. Remain composable with other existing on-chain primitives (eg DeFi, identity, and data storage protocols, to name a few) to further accelerate the race for PMF and scaling

 

Far from an afterthought, we believe Kiva’s deliberate incorporation of web3 represents a durable strategic advantage that remains critical to maximize the potential of the platform and enable it to compete effectively for existing corporate data budgets within the traditional AI world, while also being an even better fit for the web3 AI companies that also have need for Kiva’s data solutions platform.

Conclusion

We believe Kiva AI represents a compelling investment opportunity at the intersection of human-centric AI expertise and web3. As AI continues to permeate every aspect of our lives, the importance of ensuring these systems are trained on accurate, representative, and complete data cannot be overstated. Kiva’s innovative approach to this challenge, combined with the team’s proven track record, and the strategic integration of web3 elements, positions the company as a potential leader in shaping the future of AI development. By addressing the growing demand for high-quality, specialized human feedback in AI development, Kiva is poised to capture a significant share of a rapidly expanding market that could accelerate even faster. We at CoinFund are excited to support Kiva on this journey, and look forward to seeing and supporting the platform’s launch and evolution. Please feel free to check them out directly at kivaai.com!

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