Project Overview
PublicAI's project narrative focuses on 'building the human layer of AI,' aiming to enable people worldwide to earn income by contributing data through a decentralized network while advancing the AI ecosystem, providing high-quality, on-demand AI training data, and addressing international labor settlement issues. This narrative emphasizes data sovereignty, ethical AI, and Web3 incentive mechanisms.
Products
PublicAI is a Web3 distributed AI training network and decentralized platform, primarily for the collection, annotation, and evaluation of multimodal data. Core services include:
Data Collection: Obtaining high-quality content from social media and other sources through the DataHunter plugin.
Data Annotation: AI-assisted workflows including AI pre-annotation and verification.
Model Evaluation: Analyzing AI model performance, metrics, weaknesses, and using scenario testing for evaluation.
The platform supports the PublicAI Marketplace for on-demand requests for exclusive data, where community members earn rewards through tasks. The V1 version supports data types including general image annotation, 2D semantic segmentation, text collection, document transcription, named entity recognition, video playback annotation, and LIDAR (3D) annotation. Pricing models include a free tier (pay-per-use annotation) and PublicAI Pro enterprise version (unlimited annotation team members, charged by work completed).
Highlights
Scale and Network: The decentralized network has over 1.4 million workers, over 300,000 validators, over 200,000 builders, with a dataset size exceeding 100T.
Data Quality Assurance: Ensuring quality through skill verification, access tests, Soulbound Tokens (SBT), and staking penalty mechanisms.
Cost and Efficiency: Labor access without international banking barriers, on-chain staking to reduce costs, multimodal data collection.
Partners and Recognition: Trusted by Solana Foundation, NEAR Foundation, Stanford University, IBM, etc.; reported by media outlets like Bloomberg, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, etc.
Funding Status
The total funding for PublicAI is $10 million, divided into two rounds:
Seed Round: $2 million, completed on January 29, 2024. Investors include Solana Foundation, Zendit, Foresight Ventures, etc.
Series A: $8 million, completed on June 17, 2025. Investors include MH Ventures, Yield Guild Games, Tykhe Ventures, Taisu Ventures, Saudi Telecom Company, NEAR Foundation, Blockchain Builders Fund, CSPDAO, G2O, International Blockchain Consulting, etc.
Technology Team and Founders' Background
Kenji Public AI (@KenjiPublicAI), background: Co-founder of PublicAI, focusing on ethical AI, human data signals, and AIx data sovereignty.
Steven Wong (LinkedIn), background: PhD in AI from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, winner of the National Olympiad in Informatics, author of 10+ top AI papers, experience with PublicAI.
Economic Model
Community Rewards
35%
350,000,000
Allocated to community members contributing data for AI training activities
6-month cliff, revenue-driven issuance
Community Distribution
10%
100,000,000
For rewarding early adopters and community participation
Community Distribution
10%
100,000,000
Used for liquidity incentives, passive income rewards for long-term token holders, and active participants in DAO governance.
8% annual recurring revenue (ARR) for reputation stakers
Investors
15%
150,000,000
Reserved for early investors
6-month cliff, 8% quarterly
Public Sale
3%
30,000,000
Open to the global community
Foundation Treasury
12%
120,000,000
Managed by the PublicAI Foundation for ecosystem grants, research, strategic partnerships, and operational reserves.
2% unlock, 10 months cliff, 8% quarterly
Core Operations
10%
100,000,000
For core contributors and key team members to incentivize long-term commitment, align with project growth, and attract talent.
12-month cliff, 8% quarterly
Core Operations
5%
50,000,000
For growth activities, partnerships, market makers, and exchange listings.
Summary
1. Market Positioning
PublicAI addresses AI training data quality issues through the 'human layer', tackling the core pain points of the AI industry - model collapse due to synthetic data.
The platform has generated $14 million in customer revenue, with over 1 million contributors, covering over 1.4 million workers, over 300,000 validators, over 200,000 builders, with a dataset size of over 100TB. Partners include Solana Foundation, NEAR Foundation, Stanford Blockchain Accelerator, etc., showing high industry recognition.
2. Technology and Community Foundation
PublicAI's three-layer architecture (DataHub, Data Hunter, Blockchain layer) combines BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) consensus algorithm and AI-assisted annotation to ensure data quality and efficiency.
3. Future Growth Potential
PublicAI plans to launch HeadCap DePIN devices and PublicDAO (Q3 2025), expanding ecosystem functionality and enhancing community governance. The platform supports multimodal data (images, videos, LIDAR, etc.) applicable to various AI application scenarios (such as autonomous driving, medical AI), with substantial growth potential.
Clear roadmap, with Q3 2025 as a key milestone (TGE, PublicDAO launch). The platform has partnered with IBM, Stanford, etc., indicating potential for enterprise-level applications.