Sui Foundation invests $30 million to bring AI training-data network onto Sui

DATA Network is set to give up its independent blockchain as part of a $30 million investment from Sui Foundation. The partnership will move its AI training-data protocol and Trace registry onto Sui, pairing records of where data came from and who can use it with storage of the original files.

Sui Foundation and DATA Foundation announced the partnership on October 12, 2026. Sui Foundation says the investment will make it DATA Network’s largest institutional holder, alongside continuing holdings by PIP Labs and DATA Foundation. The money and infrastructure move are parts of the same agreement, rather than a funding announcement followed by a separate technology decision.

A registry built to track contributions and pay their creators

DATA Foundation launched Trace in June 2026 as a blockchain-based registry for AI training data. It records each contribution’s origin and attached rights, and settles payment to the contributor. Its role is to connect a piece of training material to a record of its source, permissions and compensation—not simply keep a catalog of files.

According to the partnership announcement, Trace has registered more than 250 million contributions since launch and processes more than 3 million receipts a day on average. Applications writing to the registry include Kled, Numo and Oto. The announcement says those applications license data to frontier AI labs and robotics companies, giving the migration an existing data-supply business to support.

From registration records to preserved original files

The next step changes what sits behind those records. Walrus will become the default storage layer for applications operated by DATA Foundation. The partners say AI labs will be able to source data cleared for their use, with its origin and rights recorded by Trace and the underlying file stored with access controls on Walrus.

Today, a Trace record establishes that a file was registered and when. With Walrus, the partners say Trace will be able to retain an encrypted, unchangeable copy of the contributed file. That preserved original would provide a reference against which later processing could be checked, rather than relying only on the registration record.

The technical distinction is the source of the file’s digital fingerprint, or hash. The announcement says that fingerprint could be regenerated from the data itself, instead of metadata supplied by an application. Walrus is also intended to restrict reading to licensed buyers. These are planned benefits of the integration, not a description of a completed migration.

The existing network stays live until the switch

On Sui, the announcement says datasets and their licenses can be represented as programmable objects, allowing their management through the blockchain. It describes independent transactions running in parallel and settling in under a second. Sui Foundation presents that architecture as suited to the millions of daily registrations Trace already processes.

For token holders, the announced transition terms preserve the existing token rather than introduce a replacement with a different conversion ratio:

• DATA tokens will carry over to Sui one-for-one.
• Holder economics and governance rights are promised to be at least equivalent to their current terms.
• Locked and vesting positions will carry over unchanged.

The migration date remains unpublished. DATA Foundation told The Block that the existing network will continue operating until the transition is complete. The partners promise a detailed timeline and holder transition plan before the upgrade. That plan is the next concrete step between the announced partnership and retirement of DATA Network’s independent chain.