The Data Economy's New Architect Trevor Koverko Pioneering the Future of AI

Int'l Business Times

05-05-2025

AI and crypto are converging into the most transformative technological duo of our era. Together, they're catalyzing a trillion-dollar shift in how data is generated, shared, and monetized. At the center of this evolution is Trevor Koverko—serial entrepreneur, former NHL draft pick, and cofounder of Sapien, a decentralized data foundry powering the future of enterprise AI models
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being applied to enhance blockchain systems, enabling dynamic gas fees, faster fraud detection, and more efficient scaling. At the same time, blockchain infrastructure promotes openness, improves interoperability, and can help safeguard AI models from bias.
More critically, AI relies on vast, continuous data flows, and blockchain offers a secure, decentralized way to produce and share that data while letting individuals and organizations retain ownership. It also introduces new incentive structures, giving contributors the opportunity to earn rewards, monetary or otherwise, for supporting this data-driven ecosystem. Turning the Data Bottleneck Into a Global Opportunity
In the world of AI, data is the new oil—and perhaps the biggest opportunity of all. While others chased compute infrastructure, serial entrepreneur (and former pro hockey player) Trevor Koverko saw something more scalable, accessible, and urgent: the human side of AI training.
That vision gave rise to Sapien , a decentralized, crypto-powered network designed to incentivize and democratize data labeling—a critical step in AI development traditionally reserved for centralized vendors with deep pockets.
Sapien functions as a human-powered data foundry, matching enterprise AI models with a global network of "AI Workers" who earn real rewards for labeling data directly from their mobile phones. Each worker is intelligently routed to tasks aligned with their skills and preferences, ensuring both quality and scalability.
Since launching in 2023, Sapien has seen explosive growth: Over 500,000 contributors have completed tens of millions of tasks,
Daily volumes have surpassed one million data tasks,
And major clients like Midjourney, Baidu, and Alibaba now rely on Sapien to fuel their AI models.
Backed by a recent $10.5 million seed round, Sapien is accelerating development to meet demand—and laying the groundwork for AI's next frontier.
View on X From OpenAI's Playbook to a Public Protocol
At TOKEN2049 Singapore, Koverko shared what inspired the idea: while exploring how top AI companies operate, he noticed that even OpenAI—arguably the leader in the space—relied heavily on human labor to fine-tune its models.
"In fact," Koverko noted, "the more humans you have fine-tuning data, the better your model performs."
But this process is expensive and gated. OpenAI is reportedly spending billions per year to maintain its labeling infrastructure. Koverko saw an opportunity to open this up to the world—and make it exciting, efficient, and rewarding.
So he built Sapien from first principles.
On the demand side, companies can simply upload raw data—drag and drop—and watch it flow through the network. On the supply side, users engage with a gamified Web3 interface where they get paid to label data, with performance-based airdrops to boost engagement.
See the game mechanics Building Standards, Not Just Products
To go a step further, Sapien is now developing its own AI data labeling standard—one that can be easily adopted across the industry. The team is taking inspiration from ERC-1400, Ethereum's tokenization standard co-authored during Koverko's time as founder of Polymath, which raised $60 million and helped shape the regulated asset tokenization space.
This isn't Koverko's first moonshot. He's backed a range of pioneering ventures across crypto and AI, including:
EigenLayer, Blockone, Ethereum, Sei, ether fi and hundreds of others
Notably, he's also an investor in xAI, Elon Musk's ambitious AI company dedicated to "understanding the true nature of the universe." A Vision Bigger Than Sapien
Taken together, Koverko's track record paints a clear picture: this is a founder who consistently spots high-leverage opportunities and builds infrastructure to unlock them.
With Sapien, he's not just creating a protocol—he's redefining how the AI economy is built, who gets to contribute, and who gets to benefit. By decentralizing access to AI training data and rewarding contributors directly, Sapien turns a multi-billion-dollar bottleneck into a global opportunity.
And with Koverko leading the charge, the future of decentralized AI looks not just promising—but inevitable.
In fact, Data is the biggest opportunity in AI, which serial entrepreneur and former professional hockey player Trevor Koverko has been capitalizing on via Sapien, a powerful decentralized solution that uses crypto to incentivize data labeling for AI models.
It is basically a human-powered data foundry that matches enterprise AI models with a decentralized network of AI Workers who get paid to produce data from their phones. Here, AI Workers are matched with optimal data tasks based on their skills and preferences.
Koverko launched the project in 2023 and in this short period, Sapien has achieved massive success . It boasts over half a million global players who have completed tens of million tasks. In fact, recently, as Koveroko noted , the protocol saw one million data tasks being completed in a day.
Moreover, Sapien counts Midjourney, Baidu, and Alibaba among its clients who rely on the network for their high-quality AI training data. A few months ago, the project also raised $10.5 million in its seed funding round to optimize AI performance.
https://x.com/PlaySapien/status/1884355409470758930
All this success may seem sudden, but that is not the case. As Koverko shared as a featured speaker at the TOKEN2049 Singapore event late last year, he first ventured into AI a few years ago.
Now, AI is about two things: data and compute. While many focus on the compute side, which makes AI models magical, Koverko was "more excited about the data side" because it's more scalable and relevant to his background.
As he started exploring how data is currently structured for AI models and how it's being done by the biggest companies in the world, he found that organizations like OpenAI outsource their data labeling, and humans are extremely important in this process.
"In fact, the more humans you have fine-tuning data, the better the model is going to perform," Koverko noted at the time.
OpenAI was the first company to use industrial-scale humans to fine-tune the data and is spending billions of dollars a year on this because that's how you build performance models. And everyone wants in, but of course, this is not possible for everyone to achieve, given how resource-intensive the process is.
To make this messy and expensive process simple, exciting, and lucrative for all, Koverko decided to build from first principles and introduced a new way to do data labeling.
"If you're a company that wants human feedback, which is any model that you want to perform well, all you do is upload your raw data to the network," which is as simple as a drag and drop, explained Koverko. Now, on the supply side, Sapien built a Web3 game where people get paid to label data. On top of it, performance-based airdrops are integrated to make it even more fun and lucrative for users.
https://x.com/PlaySapien/status/1896853520747253816
And that's not all. They are also developing their own AI data standard, allowing anyone to integrate with the Sapien front end seamlessly.
For this, the Sapien team will take inspiration from ERC 1400, the default standard
for tokenization on Ethereum, which was created during Koverko's time at Polymath.
Koverko founded Polymath in 2017 as an early tokenization platform, which successfully raised $60 million. Over the years, he continued building transformative solutions to help advance the crypto space forward. Koverko even helped other promising projects with his investments including Eigen Layer, Sei, Arca, Coinbase, ShapeShift, Matador, OpenLedger, Portal, Sentinel, Immutable, Limitless, and many others.
Another major investment of Koverko has been xAI, tech billionaire Elon Musk's AI company that aims to build AI specifically to advance human comprehension and capabilities. The goal of xAI is "to understand the true nature of the universe."
All these investments make Koverko stand out as a true visionary who's helping bring high-potential solutions to the world. With Sapien, he's now reimagining how data is sourced and labeled for AI, empowering everyday people while tackling one of the biggest bottlenecks in the AI industry.
So, with a tenacious and forward-thinking leader like Koverko at the helm, the future of decentralized AI certainly looks bright and powerful!