Miami, Florida, July 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — – droppGroup, the US-based company behind sovereign-grade AI and blockchain solutions, alongside Saudi businessman Hamoud Al-Rumayyan and veteran crypto firm Hub Culture, has fully subscribed the $5 million pre-seed round of Data Guardians Network (D-GN) – a decentralized platform delivering the most accurate and ethically sourced training data in the AI market. This investment strengthens droppGroup's ethical AI infrastructure, already in deployment with Saudi Aramco, Cisco, and multiple government partners, while expanding a growing portfolio of critical technologies grounded in compliance, transparency, and human-centered design. “Billions of dollars in lawsuits are hitting the AI industry because foundational models have been trained on stolen or unlicensed data,” said Faisal Al Monai, Chairman of droppGroup. “D-GN solves this industrial problem. It transforms global human input into an auditable, tokenized data engine that ethically trains, verifies and improves AI systems across voice, image and text. We took part of the round because we see this as a core pillar of the future AI stack for all our clients.” “When we saw Meta purchase a stake in Scale AI for around $14-15 billion, investing in Dâ€'GN at this stage looked like a steal. We believe D-GN is the Scale AI killer”. Said Faisal Al Monai, Chairman of droppGroup. “More importantly, Dâ€'GN does it differently, upholding both ethical AI and ethical labor standards. No outsourcing to clickâ€'farms, no gray IP zones – just transparent, auditable, fair data.” Unlike Scale AI, which has faced criticism over opaque labor practices and the use of unlicensed content, D-GN builds datasets through a decentralized contributor model with on-chain traceability via Solan and stablecoin payments via Tether's USDT, openly ensuring workers are paid fairly and AI models are trained responsibly. “As Saudi Arabia transforms into a global hub for AI and innovation, our focus must remain on building infrastructure rooted in ethics, equity and opportunity”. Said Mr Hamoud Al-Rumayyan. “Data Guardians Network represents a new model, one where the people who power AI are finally included in its value creation. This is not just an investment, it's a step toward a more inclusive digital economy aligned with the Saudi Vision 2030”. He concluded. Johanna Cabildo, Founder and CEO of D-GN, commented: With this investment, D-GN will scale contributor operations in MENA, Latin America and Southeast Asia, expand multimodal frontier datasets (voice, lip sync, human-emotion mapping) and deepen integrations with open-source and enterprise AI frameworks. About droppGroup droppGroup is a US-based AI and blockchain infrastructure company building the secure, sovereign systems of tomorrow. The parent company behind droppOne, it supports highly sensitive deployments across governments and Fortune 500s. About Data Guardians Network (D-GN) D-GN is a decentralized platform that turns global human input into ethically sourced training data for AI. Through stablecoin rewards, blockchain transparency and decentralized governance, D-GN enables enterprises and model developers to build AI systems that are fair, traceable and regulation-ready. Media Contact:Dominic dominic.c@lunaPR.io
“We built D-GN so that everyday people could have a stake in the future of AI, not just be the invisible labor behind it. droppGroup understands that vision deeply. This partnership gives us the fuel and the infrastructure to scale ethical data at a global level.”
