Cashmere
Category: Foundation Models / LLMs
A licensing and rights management platform that provides a secure, ethical infrastructure for publishers to license their high-quality content to AI model developers. Cashmere was founded in 2024. The company is led by Jonathan Munk. Based in Salt Lake City, USA. Team size: 10-50. Total funding raised: $5.0M. Latest round: Seed round ($5.0M, Jan 2026). Key investors include Reach Capital, Ingram Content Group, Pearson, The LegalTech Fund.
- Founded
- 2024
- Headquarters
- Salt Lake City, USA
- Team size
- 10-50
- Total funding
- $5.0M
Value proposition
Enables publishers to monetize and protect their intellectual property while providing AI developers with legally cleared, high-quality, and structured training data.
Products and solutions
AI Content Licensing Marketplace, Secure Content Management & Protection Suite, Automated Rights & Royalty Tracking System, Verified Data Delivery Pipeline for LLM Training
Unique value
Acts as a specialized 'clearinghouse' that bridges the gap between traditional publishing and AI, backed by the world's largest content distributors to ensure supply-side trust.
Target customer
Premium content publishers (book publishers, academic journals, news organizations) and Generative AI labs/LLM developers.
Industries served
Publishing, Generative AI, Education & EdTech, Legal Technology
Technology advantage
Combines secure data infrastructure with a strategic 'moat' through partnerships with industry giants like Ingram and Pearson, solving the legal and ethical hurdles of AI data sourcing.
How they differentiate
Cashmere differentiates by focusing specifically on the book and academic publishing supply chain. Unlike competitors that focus on web-scraping or news media, Cashmere leverages strategic backing from the world's largest book distributors (Ingram) and educational publishers (Pearson) to provide a secure, 'clearinghouse' infrastructure for high-value, long-form intellectual property.
Main competitors
TollBit, ProRata.ai, Dappier
Key partnerships
Ingram Content Group, Pearson, Reach Capital, The LegalTech Fund
Notable customers
Ingram Content Group, Pearson
Major milestones
Company founded in 2024 by former Degreed and Bookclub executives., Secured $5M Seed funding in January 2025 to build the 'AI-to-Publisher' licensing bridge., Established strategic partnerships with Ingram and Pearson to validate the platform's supply-side trust.
Growth metrics
Early-stage commercialization; focused on supply-side acquisition of premium publishing catalogs.
Market positioning
Specialized B2B infrastructure provider for ethical AI data sourcing and rights management.
Geographic focus
Global (Headquartered in North America)
Patents and IP
No registered patents disclosed as of January 2025.
About Jonathan Munk
Jonathan Munk is a seasoned scale-up executive with a proven track record in EdTech and SaaS. He previously served as the CEO of Bookclub and Mazlo. Most notably, he was the Chief Operating Officer at Degreed, where he was instrumental in scaling the organization from 20 to over 500 employees and driving ARR from $1M to over $90M. His career is defined by bridging the gap between content creators and technology platforms.
Official website: https://cashmere.io/