Startup profile for Protege: latest funding, latest known valuation, total disclosed funding, investors, status, sources, and why the company is interesting. Part of the Venture Capital Tracker startup directory.
Venture Capital Tracker logo
Venture Capital Tracker

Startup profile · funding coverage

Protege funding, valuation and investors

Governed marketplace licensing real-world multimodal data for AI training.

Keep track of Protege

Save this profile to your VCT watchlist for a quick return.

View watchlist

Funding, valuation & investors

Answer-first snapshot

Latest funding

Series A extension

$30M · January 2026

Latest known valuation

Not publicly disclosed

Total disclosed equity funding

$65M

Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.

Current status

private

series a · New York, NY

Investors in latest funding

Lead: Andreessen Horowitz

Other: CRV

Sources: latest funding Last verified: 2026-07-25

Overview

Protege operates a governed marketplace where data holders license proprietary multimodal datasets — de-identified health records, medical imaging, audio, video — to AI developers under contractual provenance and revenue-sharing terms. Founded in 2024 in New York by Bobby Samuels (CEO), Travis May (chairman; former LiveRamp and Datavant CEO), Engy Ziedan (CSO), and Richard Ho (CTO). CRV led a $10M seed; Footwork led a $25M Series A in August 2025; Andreessen Horowitz led a $30M Series A extension in January 2026 bringing total funding to $65M with CRV and Footwork re-upping. The company reports 20× business growth in 2025 and hundreds of data-partner organizations.

Why Protege is interesting

Datavant/LiveRamp veterans Bobby Samuels and Travis May sell consent-based healthcare and media datasets to AI labs — 20× growth in 2025 before a16z led a $30M extension to $65M total.

Product & use cases

Protege connects data owners and AI builders through consent-based licensing, governance workflows, curated dataset delivery, and revenue share — making fragmented real-world data AI-ready without gray-market scraping.

  • Licensed de-identified healthcare data for model training and evaluation
  • Multimodal media and audio datasets for foundation-model development
  • Governed enterprise data exchange with provenance and contractual controls
  • Revenue generation for data holders monetizing proprietary assets

Key facts

  • Seed (2024): $10M led by CRV (SuperbCrew / press summaries)
  • Series A (Aug 2025): $25M led by Footwork; CRV and others participated (PR Newswire)
  • Series A extension (Jan 2026): $30M led by a16z; total funding $65M (Business Wire)
  • 20× business growth in 2025 per August 2025 Series A announcement
  • Founders built data-exchange infrastructure at LiveRamp and Datavant scale

Funding history (newest first)

Series A extension

2026-01 $30M

Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260108257753/en/Protege-Raises-30-Million-Led-by-a16z-to-Unlock-Access-to-Data-for-AI-Development

Series A

2025-08 $25M

Source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/protege-announces-25-million-series-a-to-expand-ai-training-data-platform-302529087.html

Seed

2024 $10M

Source: https://www.superbcrew.com/protege-raises-30m-in-series-a-funding-led-by-a16z/

Investors in our directory

Funds linked from Protege's profile — open a fund page for stage focus and related deal articles.

Andreessen Horowitz CRV

Competitive landscape

Edge: Founding team built enterprise data connectivity at LiveRamp/Datavant — Protege applies that playbook to AI-era licensing with compliance and revenue share built in.

Protege targets enterprise-grade governed data as regulatory pressure on training corpora intensifies. Scale AI and labs' direct deals compete for the same assets; Protege differentiates on compliance infrastructure and data-holder revenue share. Speed of curating fragmented health and media sources is the operational moat.

  • Scale AI direct

    Data labeling and licensing at scale; started with human annotation, expanding into curated datasets.

  • Snowflake Marketplace adjacent

    Data sharing inside warehouse environments; less AI-native curation and licensing workflow.

  • Direct publisher/lab data deals incumbent

    Bespoke bilateral contracts; slow to scale versus marketplace aggregation.

  • Web scraping / open crawls alternative

    Lower cost but rising legal and regulatory risk versus licensed provenance.

Notable stories

  • Travis May — who previously co-founded LiveRamp and led Datavant — joined Protege as chairman, arguing 'access to data is the biggest bottleneck to the advancement of AI' (Business Wire, January 2026).
  • Protege reported 20× business growth in 2025 before the Footwork-led Series A — unusually fast traction for a marketplace that must onboard both data holders and AI buyers (PR Newswire, August 2025).

Industries

AI & Machine Learning Enterprise SaaS Healthtech

Related funding articles

Venture Capital Tracker pieces that cover Protege's financing or category context.

FAQs about Protege

Practical answers founders, operators, and investors typically search for.

Protege is a governed marketplace licensing real-world multimodal data — healthcare, media, audio — to AI developers with contractual provenance and revenue sharing.
Bobby Samuels (CEO), Travis May (chairman), Engy Ziedan (CSO), and Richard Ho (CTO) co-founded Protege in 2024.
CRV led the seed; Footwork led the 2025 Series A; a16z led the 2026 extension to $65M total. See /fund/andreessen-horowitz and /fund/crv.
$65M total after the January 2026 a16z-led $30M extension on top of the August 2025 $25M Series A and $10M seed.
Scale AI began with labeling and expanded into data products. Protege emphasizes governed licensing and revenue share with enterprise data holders from day one.
January 8, 2026 — $30M led by Andreessen Horowitz.
De-identified health records, medical imaging, audio, video, and other multimodal corpora curated from partner organizations.
AI research teams and developers needing licensed, use-case-specific training data; data holders monetize through the marketplace.
Founders built large-scale data connectivity and compliance infrastructure — relevant as AI labs face scrutiny over training-data provenance.
Not publicly disclosed. Company cited 20× growth in 2025 at Series A.
Website All startups Funding news

By Venture Capital Tracker

Last updated:

Editorial note: AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.