Best AI training data providers in 2027
By Gareth HoyleLast updated How we research
In short
The best AI training data providers in 2027 are Sell My Data To AI, Shutterstock, Defined.ai, Protege and Versos for licensed media, speech and healthcare data, and micro1, Labelbox Prism and Troveo for proprietary company records. Shutterstock claims more than 640 million images and 70 million videos, while Troveo reports more than 40 active buyers for company data.
Key takeaways
- Shutterstock data licensing is best for large volumes of licensed image and video data.
- Defined.ai is best for speech and multilingual data across 500 or more locales.
- Protege is best for healthcare, audio and spatial data with provenance.
- Sell My Data To AI wrote this list and ranks itself first. The method section explains the criteria.
- Every entry's facts come from the company's own published terms, checked November 2026.
AI training data providers fall into two groups. Content libraries such as Shutterstock and Defined.ai license media, speech and text at scale. Training-data companies such as micro1 and Labelbox Prism license operational records from businesses and supply them to AI labs.
Pick the provider by data type first. Our pages on image datasets, video training data, speech and audio data and expert domain data list what to check for each.
Provenance is the question every provider has to answer. Ask for the chain of title, the collection terms and a data manifest, and read our guide to data provenance for AI teams before you sign.
- 1
Sell My Data To AI
Best for teams that want proprietary company data from vetted sellers
Sell My Data To AI is an independent broker that finds, vets and shortlists sellers of rights-cleared training data for AI labs and enterprise AI teams. Every seller passes an eight-point standard covering ownership, contract restrictions, privacy notices, third-party content and de-identification. You see redacted samples under a mutual NDA, sign directly with the seller, and pay nothing to submit a requirement.
- Fee to buyer
- Nothing to submit a requirement or review a shortlist. Any fee agreed in writing before an introduction
- Seller vetting
- Authority to sign, ownership, contract restrictions, privacy notices, third-party content, de-identification, sample quality and manifest accuracy
- Samples
- Redacted samples under a mutual NDA before any license is signed
- License
- Signed directly between you and the seller. Full data moves only after signing
- Independence
- Independent of the buyers we work with. We do not own an AI model or buy data for our own use
- 2
Shutterstock data licensing
Best for large volumes of licensed image and video data
Shutterstock licenses image, video, music and 3D content to AI developers for training, fine-tuning, evaluation and inference. Its data licensing page claims more than 640 million images, 70 million videos, 6 million music tracks and sound effects and 1 million 3D models from more than 3 million contributors, with curation, filtering and custom dataset services. It does not buy company records.
- What it buys
- Does not buy company data. Licenses its own contributor library of images, video, music and 3D to AI developers
- Size requirement
- Not applicable
- Fee to seller
- Not published
- Payment timing
- Not published
- 3
Defined.ai
Best for speech and multilingual data across 500 or more locales
Defined.ai runs an AI data marketplace where enterprises buy ready-made or commissioned speech, text, image, video and multimodal training data. It cites more than 1.6 million contributors across more than 150 countries and more than 500 languages and locales, lists ISO 27001, 27701 and 42001 accreditation, and says only 30% of partners pass its ethical vetting. Seller revenue share and payment timing are not published.
- What it buys
- Lists speech, text, image, video, music and sound effects, and multimodal datasets from partners
- Size requirement
- Not published. Partners pass an ethical vetting process, and Defined.ai says 30% are approved
- Fee to seller
- Not published
- Payment timing
- Not published
- 4
Protege
Best for healthcare, audio and spatial data with provenance
Protege licenses real-world data from data holders to AI model builders, from startups to frontier labs, in healthcare, video, audio and speech, spatial and physical data and other domains. Its site covers pre-training, post-training and evaluation data, including healthcare benchmarks built on clinical documentation. It does not publish payouts, exclusivity, fees or payment timing, and data partners start through a contact form.
- What it buys
- Licenses healthcare (including evaluation datasets), video, audio and speech, spatial and physical, and other domain data
- Size requirement
- Not published
- Fee to seller
- Not published
- Payment timing
- Not published
- 5
Versos
Best for video datasets assembled from studio libraries
Versos is a video licensing platform that connects to existing cloud storage such as S3, indexes and enriches video libraries in place, and delivers datasets to AI companies and frontier labs while tracking provenance through to revenue settlement. It publishes no rates or fees. A Versos blog post reports OpenAI paying $1 to $4 per minute and Adobe about $3 per minute, without citing a source.
- What it buys
- Licenses video archives and libraries, delivered as bespoke datasets
- Size requirement
- Not published
- Fee to seller
- Not published
- Payment timing
- Not published
- 6
micro1
Best for operational records from established companies
micro1 licenses operational records such as engineering documentation, finance SOPs, support tickets, CRM records and logistics workflows, and supplies them to AI labs and enterprises in the US and allied countries. Its data partnerships page publishes tiers from $100,000 to more than $3 million, asks for 30 or more full-time staff and mainly English records, and says micro1 removes or transforms personal information before sharing data.
- What it buys
- Operational records such as engineering documentation, finance SOPs, support tickets, CRM records, legal and compliance procedures and logistics workflows, plus agent trajectories
- Size requirement
- 30 or more full-time staff, mainly English records, US first, then the UK and Canada
- Fee to seller
- None stated
- Payment timing
- Homepage says within 30 days of acceptance. FAQ says up to 30 days to review, then payment within 30 days of invoice
- 7
Labelbox Prism
Best for work documents and reasoning traces for frontier models
Prism, operated by Labelbox, acquires work documents such as coding sessions, research traces and financial modeling, plus operational data from Salesforce, Jira and SAP, for frontier AI developers. It publishes deals from around $50,000 to more than $1 million, pays an upfront fee at signing plus a revenue share, makes licenses exclusive by default and says first call to first wire takes under 21 days.
- What it buys
- Work documents (coding sessions, research traces, financial modeling) and operational data from systems such as Salesforce, Jira and SAP
- Size requirement
- Not published. Prefers high-volume B2C companies for support logs
- Fee to seller
- Not published. Scoping is free and non-binding
- Payment timing
- Upfront fee at signing plus revenue share. Prism says first call to first wire takes under 21 days
- 8
Troveo
Best for company data placed with many buyers
Troveo is a licensing agent that licenses company data from chat, email, documents, CRM, finance and code platforms to AI buyers on your behalf, sharing revenue on every sale. Its business data page reports more than $20 million paid to licensors and more than 40 active buyers, says full-company deals start at six figures, charges no fees and asks for time-limited exclusivity.
- What it buys
- Licenses data from chat, email, documents, work and knowledge tools, CRM, finance, and data and code platforms
- Size requirement
- Not published. Its estimator uses headcount (20 to 1,000 or more) and years trading (under 3 to 15 or more)
- Fee to seller
- None. No fees, setup costs or deductions from payouts
- Payment timing
- Revenue share on every sale. Timing set in the agreement, not published
How we ranked this list
Sell My Data To AI wrote this list and ranks itself first. We are a broker with a commercial interest in the result, and some companies below offer a service similar to ours. Read the order with that in mind.
For this list we gave extra weight to providers that state where their data comes from, how it is cleared and which data types they supply to AI teams.
| Criterion | What we checked |
|---|---|
| Fit for the data type | Whether the platform lists or supplies this kind of data in its own catalog or brief |
| Published terms | Whether payouts, size requirements and license terms appear on the company's own pages |
| Vetting | What checks the company says it runs on sellers, buyers or datasets before a sample changes hands |
| Exclusivity | Whether licenses are exclusive, non-exclusive or perpetual, and whether that is published |
| Fees | What buyers and sellers pay, and whether the rate is published |
| Payment timing | When sellers are paid, as stated by the company |
| Transparency | How much of the above you can confirm before a first call |
Every fact about another company comes from our profile of it in the data buyers directory, checked on that company's own pages in November 2026. Where a term is missing we write "Not published" rather than guess. After first place, the order reflects fit for an AI team sourcing training data, not a quality score, and we do not rate any company negatively.
We rank Sell My Data To AI first because this is our list and our service is built for this reader, not because we scored ourselves against the others. We are independent of the buyers we work with, and our terms are on our fees and how we vet pages so you can compare them line by line.
Frequently asked questions
Who are the largest AI training data providers?
How do you check that AI training data is rights-cleared?
Can AI teams buy proprietary company data?
What should an AI training data license include?
Sources
- micro1 commits $1bn to enterprise data for AI training, The Next Web, accessed November 2026
- Data licensing, Shutterstock, accessed November 2026
- Defined.ai homepage, Defined.ai, accessed November 2026
- AI marketplace partnerships, Defined.ai, accessed November 2026
- Protege homepage, Protege, accessed November 2026
- Data providers, Protege, accessed November 2026
- Versos homepage, Versos, accessed November 2026
- Sell video content as AI training data, Versos, accessed November 2026
- Data partnerships, micro1, accessed November 2026
- Prism, Labelbox, accessed November 2026
- Business data, Troveo, accessed November 2026