THE PROBLEM

Newsrooms are under more pressure than ever to publish fast — but the tools to verify what they’re publishing haven’t kept up. Synthetic media, repost chains, and missing metadata have made content provenance nearly impossible to establish. The result: legal exposure, credibility loss, and a public record no one can fully trust.

WHAT ORIGINVAULT DOES

OriginVault is an API-first content verification pipeline built specifically for media publishers. It tells you what content is, where it came from, and who created it — before you publish. Built on open C2PA standards, it integrates into existing editorial workflows without replacing them.

WHY NOW

Provenance is no longer optional — it’s becoming policy. California’s AB 853, signed in 2025, is the first U.S. law to address provenance metadata for digital content, with platform compliance requirements beginning in 2027. The EU AI Act is moving in the same direction. The infrastructure to meet these requirements is still being defined — that’s the opportunity.

WHY THIS BECOMES BIGGER

OriginVault isn’t just a verification tool — it’s the beginning of a provenance network. As more publishers adopt the infrastructure, contributors — journalists, photographers, wire services — can credential their work upstream using the same system. Content arrives already verified, reducing the burden on every organization downstream. The organizations that build this infrastructure now will define how trusted content moves across the industry.

PARTNERSHIPS & STANDARDS ALIGNMENT

C2PA — the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity — is the global standard for verifying digital content. Its members include Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Meta, BBC, OpenAI, Sony, and the Associated Press. Over 200 organizations have joined. OriginVault is an active participant — we’re not building around these standards from the outside, we’re building from within.

TRACTION

Actively seeking and engaging editorial organizations across the U.S. to build something media publishers don’t just need — but want. Ecosystem-backed by cheqd, the decentralized identity infrastructure we build on. Advised by Heather Flanagan (W3C TAG 2026–2028; Spherical Cow Consulting), one of the leading voices shaping how identity and credentials work on the web and Ankur Banerjee (co-chair, DIF Technical Steering Committee; Board Member & Strategic Advisor, cheqd) — Senior Product Director at Zama, co-chair of the global decentralized identity standards committee, and a founding force behind cheqd.

What We Evaluate

OriginVault focuses on the signals that repeatedly break in real editorial workflows:

1. C2PA / Content Credentials (authorship, edits, tools, signature chain)
2. Missing-credential cases (fingerprint + proof-of-upload/discovery)
3. Lineage across reposts and edits (source URL, timestamp, account)
4. Risk flags with specific action guidance — not just pass/fail outputs

How It Works

1. Define your Trust Profile — specify what signals matter, what constitutes sufficient provenance, and what thresholds trigger review.

2. Run intake content through the pipeline — we evaluate provenance signals against your profile at editorial speed.

3. Receive a Trust Report built for decisioning — standardized output showing what's verifiable, what's missing, what's risky, with evidence links for review and downstream reuse.

Why This Works

Standards exist. What's missing is operationalization.

C2PA and identity standards are real and maturing, but most organizations don't have the time or internal expertise to turn them into an intake layer that fits how editorial teams actually work. We do the infrastructure work so verification becomes repeatable, auditable, and portable — not a one-time effort that has to be rebuilt for every new content type or partner relationship.

Why This Becomes a Network

Once the intake layer is live, contributors — freelancers, photographers, journalists, wire services — can credential work upstream using the same infrastructure. Content arrives with usable provenance already attached, reducing verification load, reducing disputes, and creating compounding value as more organizations participate.

That's the network effect: verified content from one trusted system carries weight in another — because it's built on open standards.

Partnerships & Standards Alignment

We're not inventing new standards. We're building on — and inside — the ecosystem:

1. Active participation in C2PA, CAWG, Trust over IP, and the Decentralized Identity Foundation
2. Close technical collaboration with cheqd on trust registry and decentralized identity rails
3. SSL.com test certificate integration in production
4. C2PA conformance application in progress

Current Traction

1. $22K received from the cheqd ecosystem — validation from the infrastructure layer we build on
2. Exploring design partner conversations with editorial organizations
3. Customer discovery in progress across publication types and sizes
4. Advisors engaged after reviewing developed architecture — not pitch decks

The Ask

We're raising $300K.

This round brings our operations lead full-time and funds a backend engineer through Q1 2027. It accelerates design partner commitments and gets us to a first production deployment — the proof point that unlocks the network.

Use of funds:

1. Operations lead full-time
2. Backend engineer hire
3. Customer discovery and pilot conversion
4. Infrastructure and tooling hardening

What This Round Unlocks

Regulation is here. Standards are ready. Media publishers are next. The window to build foundational content verification infrastructure is open right now — and it won’t stay open long. This round funds the execution that turns OriginVault from a well-positioned startup into the infrastructure publishers build on. Early investors don’t just fund a product — they get in before the category is defined.

We're here to help build it right.

OriginVault · originvault.io · [email protected]