Backed by MIT & the Saudi Government, PublicAI Named Winner of the “Beyond Borders Startup Competition”
Cambridge, MA — May 10 2025 — PublicAI, the decentralized platform powering human-centered AI with verified, real-world expertise, has been named the sole winner of the “Beyond Borders AI Startup Competition” at the MIT Saudi Business Symposium 2025. The award comes with a strategic funding and marks a key milestone in PublicAI’s mission to redefine how AI training data is sourced and valued for all humankind.
The event, hosted at MIT and co-organized with Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of Investment, Ministry of Environment Water and Agriculture, and STC (Saudi Telecom Company), InspiredU spotlighted global innovation in alignment with Vision 2030. PublicAI stood out among finalists by showcasing how decentralized, gamified data sourcing can unlock fresh, inclusive AI training datasets at scale.
“We’re honored to receive this recognition from a panel that included top officials from the Saudi Ministry of Investment, AI governance experts, and global business leaders,” said Kenji Narushima, PublicAI’s Co-Founder. “It validates our belief that fair, decentralized data sourcing isn’t just the future of AI — it’s what ethical AI needs today and an approach to diminish poverty from to make a better world.”
PublicAI also engaged with several related public and private sector executives from Saudi Arabia who expressed interest in PublicAI’s approach to data cleansing — a critical issue as the country prepares to modernize and utilize its existing datasets for national-scale AI initiatives.
PublicAI’s platform already boasts over 800,000 users and has processed more than $13M in enterprise data collaborations, with recent backing from Solana Foundation, Stanford Blockchain Accelerator, Near Foundation, etc. PublicAI is quickly becoming a foundational layer in the new AI economy.
Original Post:
Learn more about PublicAI — https://publicai.io/