Enabling Data Markets for the AI Era
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The AI era is marked by not just the launch of generative AI, but a shift in how much we trust AI systems to provide accurate responses and guide critical decisions. But as we rush to adopt it, the $200 billion industry rests on a single, overlooked foundation: data. More than 78% of enterprises currently use AI — yet less than 20% review the outputs before use.
This level of trust is detrimental not only to businesses but to society itself. As we enter a new era where AI models, tools, and platforms are at the forefront, builders need trustworthy data to build reliable applications. Without trusted data, AI and other sensitive data become fragile, biased, and easy to manipulate.
The integrity of our data today determines the technology of tomorrow. We need infrastructure that can meet this moment — platforms that enable developers to do more than just store data, but ensure AI models and platforms remain reliable and empower the creation of new data markets. Just like you can’t run a city without roads, electricity, and water, you can’t run a digital economy without reliable, usable data.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce how developers can use Walrus to build new applications, open data marketplaces, and more, all based on a foundation of data we can trust.
What Happens When Data Works For You? Endless Possibilities.
In a world where the capabilities of AI continue to expand, current systems fall short when it comes to ensuring data is private and hasn’t been altered. We simply lack the platforms to enable agents to handle critical data, let alone build new opportunities for data monetization.
When builders can trust data, the possibilities are endless. The Walrus Developer Platform ensures your data remains yours, forever, with no corruption, tampering, or surprises. It’s the perfect choice for the datasets that power the future of the AI era, from AI models that detect fraud to ones powering our healthcare and financial systems.
But trust is about more than just data ownership and integrity: it also means having control over who can access that data. And although Web3 was built on an ethos of transparency, not all information was meant to be shared with everyone. Walrus is the first decentralized platform that offers access controls, allowing builders and users to protect sensitive data and decide who gets to use it and how.
It also enables multiple parties to securely perform computations on confidential data. Think of it like a shared kitchen where multiple chefs (parties) can cook using different ingredients (data). The results (the meal created) can be certified as correct and used to curate new public or private datasets, or to take actions on the Sui blockchain.
Whether you’re training AI models that require clean, verifiable data or developing a new finance app that demands high levels of privacy and security, Walrus provides the necessary tools to make your data work for you.
Walrus is For Data Markets
The global data monetization market size was valued at $3.47 billion in 2024, but 67% of organizations don’t completely trust their data used for decision-making. This creates a gap between the enormous potential of data and organization’s ability to confidently buy and sell it, limiting the growth potential of the entire market. This is where developer platforms like Walrus become essential, providing the transparency and trust that current solutions lack.
On Walrus, data isn’t just stored — it’s activated, powering new markets across every industry.
Developers can build efficient and resilient data markets where trust and value-creation are the norm. It provides developers with the essential tools needed to power a more trustworthy data economy, giving users and organizations the peace of mind to trust the accuracy of AI outputs and giving builders the power to create apps where sensitive data is safe. Most importantly, everyone can trust that data is authentic, with origins traceable to the individuals, organizations, or processes that produced it.
As a result, data becomes more than just information, but the basis of new markets powered by Walrus:
- Users, as well as publishers and content creators, can monetize any kind of data
- Researchers gain access to quality datasets to power discoveries
- Companies can turn their data into new revenue streams, offset operational costs, and purchase new data to train the next generation of AI models
Builders Leading the Way
From advertising to healthcare to data marketplaces, developers across industries are already building the future with Walrus:
CUDIS
Today, health and wellness data is siloed and monetized by centralized platforms, leaving users without ownership or control of how their health data is being used. CUDIS, a longevity protocol aiming to extend human health span by combining wearable tech (CUDIS Ring) and AI, flips this model with Walrus by giving individuals sovereignty over their health information while allowing users to sell their data to train new AI models.
Alkimi
Alkimi is rebuilding digital advertising from the ground up, turning opaque ad transactions into transparent, monetizable assets. By making ad performance transparent and verifiable with Walrus, Alkimi is pioneering AdFi – a new financial primitive that transforms verified advertising data into programmable, AI-ready financial assets.
AdFi unlocks new forms of liquidity where ad revenue becomes collateral for loans, future campaign yields can be tokenized, and rewards can be automated – turning advertising data into programmable money and creating entirely new opportunities for advertisers, publishers, users, and builders.
Traditional data distribution is slow, centralized, and gatekept, limiting who can participate in data economies (Snowflake and Databricks require lengthy approval processes that can take days). With Walrus, Baselight, a permissionless data marketplace, removes these bottlenecks and makes data instantly available (in as little as 4 minutes) for training, querying, and monetization.
Unlocking data’s real potential
For too long, data has been locked away in platforms that offer no opportunities to create value. Our vision is clear: build data-first, AI-powered markets where data and interactions with data are trusted, shared, and rewarded fairly.
Together, our data can drive collective progress. Walrus makes this vision a reality by providing the trusted infrastructure that powers the next generation of AI development.
