ORO AI, a private data AI program, recently announced the completion of a $6 million seed round led by a16z Crypto (CSX) and Delphi Ventures, with participation from Ocular VC, Orange DAO, NEAR Protocol and 0G Labs.
As you know, CSX is a16z crypto’s accelerator program for early-stage blockchain and crypto startups. CSX 04 launched the fourth cohort of the Crypto Startup Accelerator program in early April and said that over the next two months, founders of selected companies will receive from a16z crypto’s investment and operations teams The a16z CSX has also committed to investing at least $500,000 in each of the selected companies, of which decentralized AI platform ORO AI is one.
So, what exactly does decentralized AI platform ORO AI rely on to get the favor of a16z crypto, a top investment institution, at a time when liquidity is barren? Let’s find out.
What is ORO AI?
ORO AI is a decentralized AI platform designed to unlock high-quality, private data for advanced AI models, with founding team members from Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, Scale AI, Replit, Salesforce, Google DeepMind, Amazon AI and Binance.
Currently, most AI models rely on public data, but this data often lacks the depth and diversity to train truly intelligent AI.ORO AI sees this pain point and proposes an innovative solution to improve the quality of AI models using private data.ORO AI hopes to use blockchain technology and privacy-protecting protocols to enable individuals to securely contribute their own private data and to AI model training process to get due returns.
Project Mechanism: Data Sharing and Privacy Protection
Private data refers to highly personalized and sensitive data generated by individuals in their daily lives and work, which are rich in contextual information and deep signals that can significantly improve the performance of AI models. However, these data have not been effectively utilized due to privacy and security concerns.
The birth of ORO AI provides a solution for its effective utilization.
In fact, the project mechanism of ORO AI consists of two main levels: data sharing application and privacy-preserving blockchain protocol.
Data Sharing Application
ORO AI’s Data Sharing App is a gamified application where users can connect their accounts (e.g. social media, finance, health, etc.) and complete fun challenges, or “missions”. These tasks collect specific data needed by the AI company, such as the user’s health data, spending habits, social behavior, and more.
Each time a user’s data helps the AI become smarter, they receive a direct financial reward for their contribution. In addition, users can choose tasks based on their interests and needs, and contribute data they find valuable. ORO AI also makes the data contribution process fun and fulfilling through this gamification design, further increasing user engagement.
Privacy-preserving blockchain protocol
To ensure the security and privacy of user data, ORO AI employs advanced privacy-preserving technologies, such as digital vaults, zkTLS, and secure computing environments, which allow the AI to learn from user data in a secure vault without having to directly view the user’s private data.
Specifically, ORO AI’s blockchain protocol uses cryptography to store user data in a secure vault, and the AI model can only access an encrypted form of this data through a specific interface. During the training process, the AI model can only access statistical features of the data or model weight updates, but not the raw data.
Additionally, ORO AI’s blockchain will keep a public record of data contributions and rewards that can be viewed by anyone to ensure that user data is fairly remunerated.
So how can you as a user participate in ORO?
Users can contribute data by completing data collection activities required for the development of AI, such as completing specific tasks or associating user social accounts. Each data contribution will earn ORO points, which can help users unlock “great value”.
According to official data, more than 350,000 people have joined ORO’s waitlist, and its early adopters are mainly remote workers and native cryptocurrency contributors.
In order to ensure an early user experience, ORO has temporarily closed waitlist list registration.
Currently, ORO AI’s official X-following stands at 24,000 and the overall project is still in its early stages. With the disclosure of this $6 million funding round, ORO AI is in the top 10 of rootdata’s daily heat list.
Elizabeth Harkavy, a partner at a16z crypto, also publicly shared her collaboration with ORO on her personal Twitter account, expressing optimism for ORO’s protection of private data, calling it a future killer app, and arguing that ORO “will give users control over private, secure data on their devices and directly return the data’s This is why a16z crypto chose to invest in ORO,” says Elizabeth Harkavy.
As Elizabeth Harkavy says, we are at a major crossroads in the evolution of AI, and private data is the biggest gap for developers to build entirely new apps and solve real-world problems more accurately.
Can ORO AI be the next wave of killer apps by providing a new solution to unlocking the value of private data and the rapid development of AI technology?
