# Where to sell video footage for AI training: Troveo, Protege, Defined.ai, Shutterstock and Wirestock compared

> How Troveo, Protege, Defined.ai, Shutterstock and Wirestock pay owners for AI training video: terms, royalties, published payouts and which fits your library.

Canonical: https://origindatapartners.com/guides/video-data-buyers-compared
By: Origin Data Partners
Status: Published
Published: 2026-11-04
Updated: 2026-11-04
Sources checked: 2026-11-04

## Quick answer

Most video sold for AI training goes through a licensing platform that pays the owner a share of each deal. Troveo licenses video libraries to AI video and world-model teams and pays a royalty per licence; it says it has paid rights holders more than $20 million. Protege licenses media, audio and health data and pays a revenue share each time data is used. Defined.ai runs a marketplace where partners approve terms and earn licensing fees; it reports average partner revenue above $600,000. Shutterstock pays contributors an average 20% royalty on data-licence revenue, and Wirestock pays creators a pro-rata share of 50% of what it receives. Companies with operational footage such as dashcam, CCTV or worksite video often sell more directly to robotics and world-model developers.

## Key points

- Platforms differ most on terms, not just rates: royalty per licence, revenue share per use, marketplace fees or a pooled contributor fund.
- Non-exclusive licences let one library earn from several buyers; check exclusivity and duration before signing anything.
- Creator platforms suit finished footage. Company footage from vehicles, sites and lines usually needs a buyer chosen for the data.

## Video licensing platforms compared

Terms are as each company or a named report publishes them, checked November 2026.

| Platform | What it licenses | Who it works with | How owners are paid | Published numbers | Best fit |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Troveo](https://www.troveo.ai/resources/sell-your-videos-for-ai-training) | Video libraries in many genres, including documentary, sports, interviews, nature, drone and animation | Production companies, channels, broadcasters, independent shooters | Royalty per licence; non-exclusive by default; no public rate card | 40+ active buyers; $20M+ paid to rights holders | Large finished video libraries |
| [Protege](https://withprotege.ai/articles/news/protege-a16z-30million-fundraise/) | Media content, audio, de-identified health records and medical imaging | Studios, media companies, healthcare data holders | Revenue share each time data is used; some datasets paid as flat upfront fees | Hundreds of data partners; $65M raised | Media catalogues and healthcare data |
| [Defined.ai](https://defined.ai/partnership-programs) | Text, audio, image, video and multimodal datasets, including cinematic video | Companies with defined datasets | Licensing fees from marketplace sales; the partner approves terms | $600K+ average partner revenue; 5+ partners above $1M | A packaged dataset with clear rights |
| [Shutterstock](https://submit.shutterstock.com/help/en/articles/10594694-shutterstock-data-licensing-and-the-contributor-fund) | Images, video and 3D models grouped into datasets | Existing Shutterstock contributors | 20% average royalty on data-licence revenue, pooled and paid in proportion to your content | $120.3M data revenue in 2024 | Contributors already on Shutterstock |
| [Wirestock](https://wirestock.io/docs/terms-of-use) | Images, video, drone footage, design and 3D content | Individual creators (700,000+) | Pro-rata share of 50% of what Wirestock receives from a dataset buyer | $15M paid to contributors; $40M run-rate revenue | Individual creators |
| A data partner such as Origin | Company footage: fleet and dashcam, CCTV, worksite, line and aerial video | Companies with operational footage | Free to the owner; the buyer may pay Origin | Not applicable | Footage recorded for operations rather than publishing |


## Troveo: how it works and what it pays

[Troveo](https://www.troveo.ai/resources/sell-your-videos-for-ai-training) licenses video libraries from production companies, channels, broadcasters and independent shooters to teams building video-generation and world models. It licenses privately and directly to labs under NDA, pays a royalty on every licence and keeps licences non-exclusive by default. There is no public rate card: price depends on hours, resolution, variety, demand for the categories and how clean the rights are. It prefers 1080p or 4K masters and excludes third-party music unless the music licence covers AI training. [Processing](https://www.troveo.ai/content-owners) takes one to two weeks.

It launched in November 2024 with $4.5 million of seed funding, [The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/troveo-launch-content-license-ai-reddit-zynga-founders-1236047368/) reported. By March 2025 it had paid about $5 million for one million hours of content, and by October 2026 it said it had paid rights holders more than $20 million. One creator earned $33,000 in a year from about 1,000 hours of old YouTube videos through Troveo, [Semafor](https://www.semafor.com/article/10/30/2025/the-ai-boom-is-turning-old-content-into-cash-cows-for-creators) reported.

Source: [Troveo: how to sell your videos for AI training (Oct 2026)](https://www.troveo.ai/resources/sell-your-videos-for-ai-training)

## Protege: media, audio and health data

[Protege](https://withprotege.ai/articles/news/protege-a16z-30million-fundraise/) licenses media content, audio, de-identified health records and medical imaging to AI developers, and pays data partners a revenue share each time their data is used. It says it works with most of the largest US technology companies and that its partner network grew to hundreds of organisations in 2025. It raised a $30 million Series A extension led by a16z in January 2026, bringing its total to $65 million.

Its audiovisual unit, Protege Media, licenses scripted and unscripted content, final cuts and raw footage such as unused B-roll, [Luminate reported](https://luminatedata.com/blog/protege-media-is-licensing-video-to-train-ai-what-it-means-for-film-tv/). Pre-training datasets have been paid as flat upfront fees, it has done a first usage-based deal, it secures non-perpetual licences, and its contracts bar training on licensed film music or reproducing actors' faces and voices. In July 2026 [Dailymotion](https://withprotege.ai/articles/news/dailymotion-protege-partnership-announcement-video/) put a catalogue of about 40 million videos on Protege. Pricing and take rates are not published.

Source: [Protege: $30M Series A extension (Jan 2026)](https://withprotege.ai/articles/news/protege-a16z-30million-fundraise/)

## Defined.ai: a data marketplace

[Defined.ai](https://defined.ai/partnership-programs) lets data partners license text, audio, image, video and multimodal datasets through its marketplace and earn licensing fees from sales. Commercial terms vary by dataset and use, and the partner approves them; there is no fixed minimum dataset size. Onboarding reviews quality, volume, organisation and metadata, plus licensing rights, legal, compliance and security. It requires consent, documentation and the right to commercialise the data for AI training.

It reports dataset sales up 319% year on year, average partner revenue above $600,000 and more than five partners above $1 million, and said in [January 2026](https://defined.ai/press-room/defined-ai-reports-sixty-five-percent-revenue-growth) that demand is strong for multimodal data for robotics, computer vision and healthcare. Reported price points in 2024 were $2 to $4 per short-form video and $100 to $300 per hour of longer films, [The Decoder reported](https://the-decoder.com/tech-giants-are-on-a-billion-dollar-shopping-spree-for-ai-training-data/) citing Reuters.

Source: [Defined.ai: partnership programs](https://defined.ai/partnership-programs)

## Shutterstock: the contributor fund

[Shutterstock](https://submit.shutterstock.com/help/en/articles/10594694-shutterstock-data-licensing-and-the-contributor-fund) groups contributors' images, video and 3D models into datasets licensed for training machine-learning and computer-vision models. Contributors earn an average 20% royalty on data-licence revenue, shared in proportion to how much of their content is in the datasets sold, and can switch data licensing on or off separately for images and video. Its data revenue was [$120.3 million in 2024](https://shutterstock.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterstock-reports-full-year-2024-and-fourth-quarter-financial), and its initial deals with large technology companies were $25 million to $50 million each, most later expanded, [VentureBeat reported](https://venturebeat.com/infrastructure/apples-25-50-million-shutterstock-deal-highlights-fierce-competition-for-ai-training-data).

Source: [Shutterstock: data licensing and the contributor fund](https://submit.shutterstock.com/help/en/articles/10594694-shutterstock-data-licensing-and-the-contributor-fund)

## Wirestock: datasets from creators

[Wirestock](https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/14/wirestock-raises-23m-to-supply-multi-modal-data-to-ai-labs/) supplies image, video, design, gaming and 3D datasets to AI labs from more than 700,000 creators, with $40 million of annual run-rate revenue and $15 million paid to contributors, TechCrunch reported in May 2026. Under its [terms of use](https://wirestock.io/docs/terms-of-use), creators can be paid a pro-rata share of 50% of what Wirestock receives from a dataset buyer; submitted content joins its Dataset Deals Program with no opt-out, and model releases are required for identifiable people.

Source: [TechCrunch: Wirestock raises $23M (May 2026)](https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/14/wirestock-raises-23m-to-supply-multi-modal-data-to-ai-labs/)

## Company footage is a different sale

These platforms are built mainly for media libraries and creators. Footage a company records for its operations, such as dashcam, CCTV, worksite, production-line or aerial survey video, is in demand from robotics and world-model developers, but it raises different questions: faces, recorded audio, what workers were told and who owns client-commissioned captures. See [selling company video footage to AI and robotics companies](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/sell-video-footage-physical-ai), and the [video data prices tracker](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/video-data-prices-tracker) for what buyers have paid.


## Guides for other record types

What buyers want, published payouts and the rules for each kind of record:

- [Work orders and field service records](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/sell-field-service-records-ai-training)
- [Slack, Teams and email archives](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/sell-slack-email-archives-ai-training)
- [Source code and its history](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/sell-source-code-ai-training)
- [Call recordings and transcripts](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/sell-call-recordings-ai-training)
- [Patient records](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-patient-records-ai-training)
- [Medical imaging and diagnostics](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-medical-imaging-data-ai)
- [Deal, credit and portfolio data](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-deal-data-investment-firms)
- [Payments and transaction data](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-transaction-data-ai-training)
- [Security alerts and incident cases](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-security-incident-data-ai)
- [AI usage logs and agent trajectories](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-ai-product-usage-data)
- [Lab notebooks and R&D records](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-rd-experiment-records-ai)
- [CAD files and engineering data](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-cad-engineering-data-ai)
- [Video footage for robotics and physical AI](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/sell-video-footage-physical-ai)
- [AI video training data prices tracker](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/video-data-prices-tracker)


## Next step

Count your hours by type and year, pull ten sample clips and check the rights. Origin can tell you which buyers would pay for the footage and which route fits.

Origin Data Partners works with companies that own data and helps get it bought. We are independent of the services on this page, and a buyer may pay us when a deal closes ([how Origin is paid](https://origindatapartners.com/referral-disclosure)). [See what your data is worth](https://origindatapartners.com/check-fit).


## Questions and answers

### What is the best place to sell video footage for AI training?

It depends on the footage. Troveo suits large finished video libraries and pays a royalty per licence; Protege suits media catalogues and healthcare data; Defined.ai suits packaged datasets; Shutterstock and Wirestock suit individual contributors. Company operational footage often sells best directly to robotics and world-model developers.

### Troveo vs Protege: what is the difference?

Troveo focuses on video libraries and licenses privately to AI labs for a royalty per licence, non-exclusive by default. Protege licenses media, audio and health data, pays a revenue share each time data is used, and has also paid flat upfront fees for some datasets.

### How much does Troveo pay for video?

It publishes no rate card; price depends on hours, resolution, variety, demand and rights. It says it has paid rights holders more than $20 million, and one creator earned $33,000 in a year from about 1,000 hours of old videos through it.

### How does Defined.ai pay data partners?

Partners earn licensing fees when their datasets sell on its marketplace, on terms the partner approves. Defined.ai reports average partner revenue above $600,000 and more than five partners above $1 million.

### What does Shutterstock pay contributors for AI training data?

An average 20% royalty on data-licence revenue, shared in proportion to how much of each contributor's content is in the datasets sold. Contributors can opt images and video in or out separately.

### Is Wirestock's dataset program optional?

Not under its current terms of use: submitted content joins its Dataset Deals Program with no opt-out, and creators can be paid a pro-rata share of 50% of what Wirestock receives from a dataset buyer.

## Sources

- [Troveo: how to sell your videos for AI training (Oct 2026)](https://www.troveo.ai/resources/sell-your-videos-for-ai-training)
- [The Hollywood Reporter: Troveo launches (Nov 2024)](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/troveo-launch-content-license-ai-reddit-zynga-founders-1236047368/)
- [Semafor: the AI boom is turning old content into cash (Oct 2025)](https://www.semafor.com/article/10/30/2025/the-ai-boom-is-turning-old-content-into-cash-cows-for-creators)
- [Protege: $30M Series A extension (Jan 2026)](https://withprotege.ai/articles/news/protege-a16z-30million-fundraise/)
- [Luminate: Protege Media is licensing video to train AI (Dec 2025)](https://luminatedata.com/blog/protege-media-is-licensing-video-to-train-ai-what-it-means-for-film-tv/)
- [Protege: Dailymotion partnership (Jul 2026)](https://withprotege.ai/articles/news/dailymotion-protege-partnership-announcement-video/)
- [Defined.ai: partnership programs](https://defined.ai/partnership-programs)
- [Defined.ai: 65% revenue growth (Jan 2026)](https://defined.ai/press-room/defined-ai-reports-sixty-five-percent-revenue-growth)
- [The Decoder: tech giants' shopping spree for AI training data (Apr 2024)](https://the-decoder.com/tech-giants-are-on-a-billion-dollar-shopping-spree-for-ai-training-data/)
- [Shutterstock: data licensing and the contributor fund](https://submit.shutterstock.com/help/en/articles/10594694-shutterstock-data-licensing-and-the-contributor-fund)
- [Shutterstock: full-year 2024 results (Feb 2025)](https://shutterstock.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterstock-reports-full-year-2024-and-fourth-quarter-financial)
- [VentureBeat: Shutterstock deals with Apple and others (Apr 2024)](https://venturebeat.com/infrastructure/apples-25-50-million-shutterstock-deal-highlights-fierce-competition-for-ai-training-data)
- [TechCrunch: Wirestock raises $23M (May 2026)](https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/14/wirestock-raises-23m-to-supply-multi-modal-data-to-ai-labs/)
- [Wirestock: terms of use](https://wirestock.io/docs/terms-of-use)

## Related reading

- [Can a company sell its video footage to AI and robotics companies?](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/sell-video-footage-physical-ai)
- [AI video training data prices and deals tracker: per minute, per hour and per deal (2024 to 2026)](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/video-data-prices-tracker)
- [License skilled-work demonstrations for physical AI](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/license-skilled-work-demonstrations-for-ai)
- [AI data licensing deals tracker: who paid what, 2023 to 2026](https://origindatapartners.com/guides/ai-data-licensing-deals)