Reddit and Zynga founders are funding AI content licensing deals

Marty Pesis – who earlier this year sold Vouch, a creator recruitment platform, to YouTuber MrBeast – has launched Troveo, a platform that helps content owners, including creators, filmmakers, production companies and others, “license their content to AI companies while retaining ownership rights,” with $4.5 million in seed funding.

The launch is supported by financial backing from an early-stage venture capital firm Seven Six Sixfounded in 2020 by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and angel investors including Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Siqi Chen and Andreas Klinger.

Troveo also said it has “inked agreements with leading AI companies to pay out more than $5 million to content owners and digital rights managers by the end of the year.”

Troveo co-founder Trent Krupp, who previously worked for Impact, the LinkedIn for Hollywood crewworkers founded by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, is the company’s Chief Revenue Officer.

Troveo outlined its positioning in the rapidly emerging AI space as follows: “Lawmakers are years behind in their understanding and regulation of the industry, resulting in a lawless system where AI companies can scrape data from the internet without compensation to the rightful owner of that data. Content owners are among the sectors most affected by this, as they can spend more than $1 million on a single video without receiving any compensation from AI companies.”

Troveo founder and CEO Pesis said: “AI companies are seen as adversaries of the creative industries, but we believe there is a better way forward. We enable creators to work side by side with AI companies in a way that ensures they are fairly compensated for their contributions.”

The company’s platform allows companies to upload their content and then get licensing deals and revenue from AI companies that are “interested in training their data,” meaning they use data to train their machine learning models , this is how it outlined its approach. “Troveo always puts content owners first, allowing them to retain full ownership rights and the ability to license their content an unlimited number of times.”

Ohanian said: “There has been significant progress in data training. Creatives are looking for more revenue streams, and AI companies are looking for quality data.”

Pesis’ first company SociaLink, which he sold in 2017, helped celebrities build audiences and launch products. In 2018, he joined the celebrity video greeting service Cameo. Most recently, Pesis founded and sold Vouch to MrBeast.