# Created by Humans

> Created by Humans is a San Francisco startup building a licensing marketplace that lets authors and other creators sell the rights to their work for AI training, reference, and transformation - and get paid for it. Founded by former Scribd CEO Trip Adler, the platform lets rights holders claim their books (by ISBN or upload), set the terms under which AI companies may use them, and track usage and payments, positioning licensing as an alternative to lawsuits between creators and AI developers.

- **Founded:** 2024
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founders:** Trip Adler (Founder & CEO (co-founder and former CEO of Scribd))
- **Team size:** ~12 employees
- **Products:** AI Rights Licensing Platform, Rights types (Training, Reference, Transformation), Creator dashboard, AI developer marketplace
- **Notable:** Launched an AI rights licensing platform for authors, with a public beta in January 2025 in partnership with the Authors Guild., Secured public backing from bestselling authors including Walter Isaacson, Susan Orlean and Douglas Preston., Raised roughly $11 million total across seed rounds backed by prominent tech founders.

## Products & services

- **AI Rights Licensing Platform** — A marketplace where authors and rights holders claim their works (via ISBN or direct upload), set licensing preferences, and get compensated when AI developers license their content.
- **Rights types (Training, Reference, Transformation)** — Granular rights authors can license individually - AI training rights and reference rights at launch, with transformation rights (e.g., voice, style, characters) planned.
- **Creator dashboard** — Tracking tools that show authors where their work is being used by AI models and what they have earned.
- **AI developer marketplace** — A single interface where AI companies can browse and license premium, legally cleared content from many rights holders at once.

## Achievements

- Launched an AI rights licensing platform for authors, with a public beta in January 2025 in partnership with the Authors Guild.
- Secured public backing from bestselling authors including Walter Isaacson, Susan Orlean and Douglas Preston.
- Raised roughly $11 million total across seed rounds backed by prominent tech founders.
- Positioned licensing as a practical alternative to the wave of author-vs-AI copyright litigation.

## Latest updates

- **2024-06** — Emerged from stealth with ~$5M seed funding backed by David Sacks, Garry Tan, Walter Isaacson and others to help creators license their work to AI models.
- **2025-01** — Launched public beta AI licensing platform for book authors alongside the Authors Guild and a $5.5M seed round; NPR, Fortune and Publishers Weekly covered the rollout.
- **2025-03** — Ran 'AI Rights Licensing 101' education sessions with the Authors Guild.
- **2025-07** — Trip Adler featured in interviews on whether copyright can survive the machine era and how creativity can thrive in the AI age.

## Links

- Website: https://createdbyhumans.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/createdbyhumans
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/createdbyhumans

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/created-by-humans
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-06