Finally, someone is interested in everything I have lived through.
What I can do. How I speak. What I create. What I look like.
No, he is not asking me out.
He has a business model.
There is a particular pleasure in hearing someone say, “Your experience is incredibly valuable.”
Usually, this is followed by a request to work for free.
Give a talk. Share some insights. Provide a quick comment. Cast an eye over a project that somehow requires both eyes and the rest of your week.
So an offer to pay for human experience sounds almost indecent.
You want to ask: are you quite sure you understand how working with people usually goes?
Judging by its announcement, SignSplit does. And it proposes building a business around it.
On 5 October 2026, the company announced $400 million in strategic financing from W Group at a $1 billion valuation. Its idea is to help people and organisations authorise the use of their data, work and likeness on agreed terms and receive compensation. The company calls this signed data: data with recorded provenance, consent and terms of use.[1]
So artificial intelligence might find you interesting.
Not necessarily as someone to talk to.
Possibly as a supplier.
Lovely. At least we have defined the relationship.
Human experience has found an investor
There is a name in this story that Ukrainian readers may recognise: Volodymyr Nosov, founder of W Group. The group’s ecosystem includes the cryptocurrency exchange WhiteBIT, and its corporate website lists SignSplit among its projects.[3]
SignSplit is registered in Delaware in the United States. The announcement names Glib Denisov as its founder and Alessandro Monterosso as co-founder and CEO. The company was founded in 2024.[1]
According to the investor’s announcement, W Group is the sole investor in this round and the anchor strategic partner. The bet is fairly clear: consent to use data, and payment for that use, should become an important part of the AI economy.[2]
Now that is interesting.
While we argue about whether machines can replace people, someone is building a company around what people still have left to sell.
A voice. Skills. Creative work. Experience.
Apparently, the future still needs us.
It would just prefer a contractual relationship.
“You’re irreplaceable” finally has a commercial follow-up: “Please state your rate.”
Four hundred million. Now finish the sentence
This is where I would like to do something that usually ruins a beautiful headline: read the paragraph after the number.
SignSplit’s announcement describes a financing commitment combining capital with a multi-year package of strategic resources. The release does not disclose the split between money and those resources.[1]
So “a $400 million package was announced” and “$400 million landed in the bank account” are different claims.
The published text does not establish the second one.
I am a great believer in finishing sentences. Especially sentences that begin with money and end with various forms of support.
“I’ll invest in our future.”
Wonderful. How much by bank transfer, and how much in advice?
This is not evidence that anything is wrong with the investment. It is a reason not to turn the terms of a deal into a simpler, more spectacular story.
The billion-dollar valuation also needs to stay in its own lane.
A company planning to help people earn money from their data can receive a high valuation long before we find out how much an individual person will earn.
There is still a business to build between those numbers.
Preferably with a working withdrawal button.
What, exactly, is for sale?
SignSplit’s description covers human data, knowledge, skills, creative work and likeness. The proposed users of these materials include AI and robotics companies, researchers and media platforms. The investor specifically mentions faces, voices and everyday experience.[1][2]
This does not mean the service is offering to buy your entire biography, including the messages from your ex and the reasons you stopped replying.
Although some message histories contain enough material for an independent academic discipline.
The proposal is more specific: a person or organisation supplies a particular piece of material for a particular use.
Imagine, for example, a voice recording or a demonstration of professional skills. Being paid for that work is a perfectly reasonable proposition.
I see nothing romantic about unpaid labour just because the recipient calls itself the future.
The future can send an invoice to its investor, too.
The more interesting question is where the boundary falls between “I agreed to provide this” and “you can now turn it into everything else”.
That is where the real story begins.
I agreed. To what, exactly?
In a good presentation, consent looks tidy.
A person gives permission. A company uses the material. The person gets paid.
Nobody cries. Everyone has a nice photograph on the About page.
But the contract will have to answer some considerably less photogenic questions.
Am I providing my voice for one project, or for the creation of more recordings later?
Can the material be passed to other companies?
Is payment a one-off, or does it depend on subsequent use?
Is there a time limit?
What happens if I change my mind?
And who will explain all of this before I press the attractive button?
These are questions for a participant’s future agreement, not terms I have discovered in SignSplit’s contract. The announcements I reviewed do not provide a detailed payment formula or complete answers to these questions; I was unable to verify the participant licence.
There is therefore no basis yet for promising readers a specific income.
We have an investment figure. What your life experience will receive remains an open question.
And I find that question considerably more interesting than another conversation about how profoundly humanity is about to change.
Humanity can wait a minute. I am checking the commission.
The most valuable part may be the permission
Look at SignSplit’s proposal through a potential buyer’s eyes, and the purpose of an intermediary becomes clearer.
Alongside the material, the company offers information about its origins and terms of use. It also describes a verification system through which digital services could check the relevant permissions. These are the company’s descriptions of its capabilities, not the findings of an independent test.[1]
My reading of this model is that a buyer may need more than an interesting voice or a useful collection of examples. The buyer also needs to understand on what basis they may use them.
Suddenly, the most attractive line in your profile might not be “talented”.
It might be “permission documented”.
Once, to attract someone serious, you had to be exceptional.
Now, perhaps, you merely have to be legally convenient.
Progress takes many forms.
There is a worthwhile possibility here, too. If the material’s origins are genuinely checked, the terms are clear and payment reaches the person, this model could give participants more control.
I like an arrangement in which I am asked first and paid afterwards. It has a small but devoted following among women.
Where the beautiful idea ends
I would not declare SignSplit either the saviour of human creativity or another means of appropriating it.
For now, the loudest public number concerns the company’s financing.
For an individual, the more important figures will be considerably less glamorous: what they received, for which use, and what they kept control of.
The platform’s success and a good deal for its participants can coincide.
But that coincidence will have to be secured by the terms, rather than the founder’s tone of voice.
I have a complicated relationship with the phrase “fair compensation” in general.
It sounds lovely until you discover that fairness is being calculated by the person who has to pay.
I would like to see an example.
Here is the material. Here is the buyer. Here is the permitted use. Here is the amount paid to the person. Here is the platform’s share.
Without first having to believe in a new economy.
An old-fashioned bank statement will do.
A life well lived. Please attach proof
What catches my attention in this story is the change in vocabulary itself.
Your voice is no longer just your voice.
Your skill is more than a line on a CV.
What you have learned through years of work and life can be described as material that someone wants access to.
There is a chance of new income in that. And a reason to choose more carefully the words through which you grant that access.
I do not mind my experience being useful to someone.
I am positively in favour of being paid for it.
But if someone turns up saying, “We value your uniqueness,” I now want to know how many copies of that uniqueness they will be allowed to make.
And who they will be allowed to pass them to.
Finally, someone wants my life experience.
Wonderful. I will read the licence terms before either of us starts talking about trust.