Sapien, a startup that incentivizes individuals to contribute various types of data for AI applications, has announced it has successfully raised $10.5 million in seed funding. This funding round was led by Variant, with contributions from Primitive Ventures, Animoca, Yield Game Guild, and HF0.

The team at Sapien is spearheaded by Rowan Stone, a former co-creator of Coinbase's layer 2 network Base, alongside Trevor Koverko, the founder of Polymath. They aim to energize a large workforce dedicated to data labeling using payment methods like USDC stablecoin and a rewards system. These labelers can assist in tasks ranging from identifying everyday items to detecting specific types of cancer cells.

“The big unlock that OpenAI found was that in order to help AI be smarter and get closer to human level reasoning is to throw industrial scale human labor at the problem,” said Rowan Stone during an interview. “And so literally, just have lots and lots of people provide their knowledge or their input in order to make the models smarter.”

Sapien is currently addressing data challenges for 17 major enterprise partners, including behemoths like Alibaba and Baidu. To date, they have recruited over 100,000 AI workers to assist in data provision, reflecting the growing demand for labeled data in AI training.

As outlined by the company, participants must stake collateral to ensure quality input; failing to provide reliable work could result in penalties, akin to a proof-of-stake model seen in blockchain environments.