Toss, a leading mobile financial platform, teamed up with Poseidon to create a groundbreaking system allowing its 30 million users to contribute real-world data for artificial intelligence training and get compensated for it. This partnership marks Toss’s entry into the AI data economy, offering ordinary users a direct role in powering AI development.
Poseidon specializes in sourcing and licensing genuine real-world data essential for next-generation AI models, which cannot be sufficiently trained using publicly available web data alone. The emerging AI landscape relies heavily on data capturing authentic human behavior, speech, and movement, often unavailable or unverified in open datasets. Toss’s vast user base provides the scale required to gather this valuable information, especially in Korean language contexts.
Within the Toss app, users gain access to Poseidon’s contributor tool, Numo, which collects voice, image, and video data recorded in natural settings. Contributors receive payments proportional to their input, facilitated by a system that transparently tracks and values each data piece. This infrastructure stems from DATA, an AI data network developed by Poseidon that ensures every data contribution’s authenticity via a public verification layer known as Trace, allowing buyers and contributors alike to observe a verifiable data provenance trail.
DATA Foundation, recently rebranded from Story, oversees this network and collaborates with integration partners like Kled, a human data marketplace. Poseidon ranks among the largest refined data providers feeding into DATA. The focus on collecting first-person, real-environment data addresses a critical need for physical intelligence applications such as robotics and autonomous vehicles, where precise and context-rich data is indispensable.
The partnership aims to first validate this new data economy model in Korea, leveraging Toss’s strong domestic presence, before extending it globally. Industry experts note increasing international demand for high-quality, verified real-world data, positioning Korea and Toss as key contributors.
A Toss executive emphasized the rising value of verified, high-quality AI data, highlighting the company’s commitment to creating a transparent ecosystem where users’ data contributions are recognized and rewarded fairly. This collaboration presents a potential blueprint for integrating everyday consumers into the AI supply chain, aligning data creation with ethical compensation practices.