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Stewards & Custodians is a newsletter for those investing in the preservation of Black history at a pivotal moment. As AI emerges as a dominant technology, we must contribute accurate information about our culture, even as nations begin returning what was taken. We track the urgency of this work and the financial opportunity as the global diaspora unites to reclaim and protect its own cultural legacy. |
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From the Collection: The First Responders
Long before archives and algorithms, they were already there, cameras raised, standing in the middle of history as it happened. Four photojournalists, friends for more than 50 years, were first responders to Black life, arriving at the moment something mattered and making sure it wasn't lost to time. Two of them have won Pulitzer Prizes.
The Obsidian Collection is now working with these four friends to preserve their combined body of work, hundreds of thousands of images that have sat untouched for decades, unseen by the public since the moment the shutter clicked. Contact sheets of quiet, unguarded instants. Portraits never printed. Scenes from streets that no longer exist in the form they were captured.
Their value is difficult to overstate. These are the only surviving evidence of specific moments in Black history, captured by four friends trusted enough to be let in for half a century. This is what "in real time" means to us: reaching the boxes before they're lost for good.
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| Learn More About Them |
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The Next AI Investment Opportunity May Be in the Data
Private capital is pouring into AI, not only into the companies building models, but also into the infrastructure, computing power, and data required to make those models more valuable. In the first half of 2026 alone, generative AI companies raised a record $217.7 billion in private capital, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
And on August 10, NVIDIA announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure, explicitly describing computing infrastructure as an “investable asset class.” But infrastructure is only one part of the AI economy. The next strategic asset is high-quality, proprietary data.
The Obsidian Collection is building a rights-cleared archive of authentic Black images, documents, and cultural history. This is content that has been historically underrepresented in the datasets shaping artificial intelligence.
We believe this represents more than a preservation opportunity. It is an investable data asset at the intersection of AI, intellectual property, and cultural ownership.
As billions of dollars move into the AI economy, the question is becoming increasingly important:
Who owns the data that AI will learn from?
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Dodging a Bullet
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As AI companies buy up antique and rare books by the thousands, scan them, and destroy the originals, historians and archivists are sounding the alarm over what may be gone for good. Reporting has revealed operations tied to companies like Amazon and Anthropic slicing bindings, feeding pages into high-speed scanners, and shredding what's left, even when the copy destroyed is one of the last in existence. It's a sobering moment for anyone who cares about preserved history. But Black history, most likely, largely excluded from these collections in the first place, may have dodged this particular bullet. That's not protection. It's a warning that we can't rely on someone else to decide what's worth saving.
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A Living Archive |
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Preservation isn't the end of the story. It's the beginning. Across The Obsidian Collection, we bring our archives to life through seven distinct ways of storytelling, each one a different door into the same history. One of those doors is Obsidian Magazine, where the objects we preserve become narrative, image and voice again, put directly into readers' hands. An archive that only sits in storage is only half saved. Ours is built to be read, seen and felt. |
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Together, we are not simply preserving media, we are protecting the cultural record of a people. Thank you for standing with The Obsidian Collection in this work. The archive speaks. We are listening. |
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