Protege Scores $30M From a16z to Fuel AI's Real-World Data Engine

NEW YORK, NY – January 08, 2026 – As the artificial intelligence race intensifies, the industry is confronting a fundamental roadblock: a scarcity of high-quality, real-world data. Addressing this challenge head-on, AI data platform Protege today announced a $30 million funding injection led by venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The financing expands a previous $25 million Series A round from August 2025, bringing the company's total funding to $65 million since its founding in 2024.

The investment signals a significant vote of confidence in Protege's mission to build a trusted, scalable pipeline for the proprietary data needed to train the next generation of AI. While advancements in computing power and model architecture have been explosive, they have outpaced the ability of developers to responsibly source the vast, diverse datasets required to make AI more capable, accurate, and safe.

“Across industries, we’re seeing demand for real-world data grow faster than the market’s ability to supply it responsibly,” said Bobby Samuels, CEO and co-founder of Protege. “At the same time, data is highly fragmented, and neither data holders nor AI builders are set up to operationalize it at scale. Protege serves as a trusted source of curated, and AI-ready data while unlocking new revenue streams for data providers.”

The New Bottleneck: AI's Thirst for Data

The AI industry's insatiable appetite for information has largely exhausted the utility of public datasets scraped from the open internet. To move beyond general-purpose models and build specialized, high-stakes applications in fields like healthcare and media, developers require access to data that mirrors real-world complexity. This information—from de-identified medical images and clinical notes to licensed audio and video archives—is often locked away in private, siloed databases, inaccessible due to privacy, legal, and commercial concerns.

This is the critical bottleneck Protege aims to solve. The company acts as a facilitator, creating a governed marketplace where holders of valuable proprietary data can safely license it to AI developers. Protege’s clients reportedly include a majority of the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants, underscoring that even the world's most powerful AI players face significant challenges in legally and ethically acquiring the data they need to innovate.

“Access to data is the biggest bottleneck to the advancement of AI,” said Travis May, Chairman and co-founder of Protege, who previously led data-centric companies Datavant and LiveRamp. “The next phase of AI will be driven by real-world, proprietary data generated through everyday human activity.”

Protege aggregates these disparate sources, providing technical expertise to curate, structure, and optimize datasets for specific AI training and evaluation workflows. This curated approach marks a shift in the market, moving from a simple need for “more data” to a sophisticated demand for “the right data” with clear provenance.

Building a Marketplace on a Foundation of Trust

In an era of heightened scrutiny over data privacy and AI ethics, Protege’s emphasis on a “licensing-first” model is its core differentiator. Instead of relying on web scraping or ambiguous data collection methods, the company establishes formal licensing agreements with data providers. This ensures compliance with complex regulatory frameworks like Europe’s GDPR and the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Handling sensitive information like de-identified health records requires rigorous privacy protocols. Protege asserts it has built best-in-class procedures to protect intellectual property and patient privacy, creating guardrails that allow valuable health data—from structured records to unstructured notes—to be used for medical AI advancements without compromising patient confidentiality. The company's platform is designed to manage the complexity of real-world data while making it usable for modern AI development, a point echoed by its new lead investor.

“The next era of AI will be shaped by who can responsibly unlock access to the world’s most valuable data,” said Daisy Wolf, a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Protege has built a platform that respects the complexity of real-world data across industries while making it usable for modern AI development. Their momentum reflects a broader shift in the market, and we’re proud to support the team as they scale this critical layer of the AI ecosystem.”

A New Economy for the World's Information

Beyond simply acquiring data, Protege’s business model is creating a new economic paradigm for data owners. The platform allows organizations to transform their underutilized or siloed data into a new, responsibly governed revenue stream. Through structured agreements and revenue-sharing arrangements tied to usage, data providers are compensated each time their information is licensed for an AI project.

This creates a powerful incentive for organizations to participate in the AI economy. For example, a major European broadcaster reportedly earned over $1 million in six months by licensing its media content catalog through Protege. By establishing exclusive AI training rights and managing the licensing process, Protege was able to maximize the value of the broadcaster’s assets while providing a critical resource for generative AI development.

This model empowers data providers with transparency and control, offering them ongoing input and visibility into how their data is being used. For companies in media, healthcare, and other verticals, this represents a pathway to monetizing proprietary assets that were previously seen as a cost center or a protected, but inert, resource.

With its new capital, Protege plans to accelerate product development, aggressively expand its data partner network into new domains, and scale its infrastructure. The investment from a16z and returning backers like Footwork and CRV validates the growing consensus that a dedicated, ethical, and scalable data layer is not just a commercial opportunity but a fundamental requirement for the future of artificial intelligence.