Sui Foundation invests $30 million in DATA Network as AI data protocol migrates to Sui
Sui Foundation is investing $30 million in DATA Network as part of a strategic partnership that will see the AI training data protocol join the Sui stack and integrate with onchain data storage platform Walrus.In a Monday statement shared with The Block, DATA Foundation, which supports DATA Network, said that Sui Foundation will become the network's largest institutional holder, alongside existing stakeholders PIP Labs and DATA Foundation.Under the partnership, DATA Network is set to be upgraded to run as a protocol natively on Sui (SUI), and its independent chain will be retired. The existing DATA token will move to Sui on a one-to-one basis. The existing DATA Network will continue to operate until the transition is completed, and the foundation said it will release a detailed timeline prior to the upgrade.Walrus, meanwhile, will become the default storage layer for applications operated by DATA Foundation, which shifted its focus from general intellectual property infrastructure to AI training data in June.The partnership aims to scale the supply chain for AI training data. DATA Network's Trace, launched in June, tracks the origins and usage rights of AI training data while settling payment to the person who contributed it.According to the statement, the Trace registry has recorded more than 250 million contributions since its launch and currently processes more than 3 million receipts per day on average. The foundation said that the upgrade gives AI labs a place to source real-world training data they are allowed to use."The AI industry has reached the point where the open internet has been read, and the next frontier is defined by access to datasets with the consent and provenance that regulators require," said Adeniyi Abiodun, co-Founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui and Walrus."The migration of DATA Network and Trace to our stack now brings massive volumes of high-quality, rights-cleared data that is already serving the world's frontier AI labs," Abiodun added.