Verb launched a marketplace where consumers sell their own data to AI labs

Verb is a data exchange whose app lets people sell their personal activity data directly to companies, mainly AI labs.

That consumers will prefer to be paid directly for data they generate, and that AI labs will buy it, where earlier pay-for-data attempts struggled.

CEO and co-founder Cyrus Beschloss says people have given data away for decades and Verb will be where they go to monetise it. AI companies have spent years buying or scraping datasets from publishers, app developers and data brokers.

Verb launched the marketplace on Thursday 6 August 2026. Users add the Verb tracker to their phone, toggle off categories such as search activity, set a price with a Verb estimate, and can block specific companies from buying. Verb says it excludes passwords, text messages and health data from analysis. Beschloss expects AI labs to be the biggest buyers and says the marketplace could create a new asset class.

AI companies need vast, fresh data to train upcoming models.

Companies already spend billions on consumer data while consumers are rarely paid.

Proprietary behavioural data may become more valuable than web data models have already consumed.

Verb lets users set a price and block specific buyers.

A data marketplace depends on buyers paying for data and users trusting the collector, and previous pay-for-data attempts struggled on both.

As of 2026-08-06 the marketplace was launching; Verb disclosed no users, sales or buyers, and privacy risks and past failures remained open questions.