DATA Foundation Launches Trace to Address AI’s Training Data Crisis

The DATA Foundation has emerged from stealth with a solution to AI's most pressing bottleneck: the scarcity of high-quality training data. Its new onchain registry, Trace, aims to bring provenance and licensing clarity to the multi-billion dollar AI data market through a flagship integration with Kled—the world's largest opt-in human data marketplace.

With 1.5 billion user-contributed records now registered on-chain, the foundation positions itself as the missing infrastructure for enterprise AI development. "The scrapable web is exhausted," says incoming CEO Andrea Muttoni. "Labs need auditable chains of custody, not just raw datasets."

The move comes as regulatory scrutiny intensifies around data sourcing practices. Frontier AI labs increasingly face legal risks from undocumented training materials, while the commercial value of licensed data has skyrocketed. Trace's blockchain-based approach offers both provenance tracking and a marketplace for compliant data exchange.