Story Protocol swaps IP vision for AI data infrastructure

Story Protocol has rebranded as the DATA Foundation after replacing its original intellectual property licensing strategy with a new focus on AI training data infrastructure.

According to the company’s Thursday announcement, the layer-1 blockchain project will now build systems for sourcing, verifying, licensing, and paying contributors for data used to train artificial intelligence models.

The company described AI training data as “the most valuable and least solved category of IP,” arguing that major AI labs are facing a costly supply problem as easily scraped internet data becomes less useful.

The market reaction was positive despite pressure across crypto. Shortly after the rebrand, Story Protocol’s renamed DATA token rose 16.7% to $0.35, outperforming a crypto market hit by nearly $1.5 billion in liquidations after U.S. PCE data showed annual inflation accelerated to 4.1% in May.

Story is moving from open IP licensing to verified AI data

Story said its original plan was to create an IP layer for the internet, but president and product chief Andrea Muttoni said the project ran into a problem with large rights holders. According to Muttoni, companies behind valuable music, games, and brands were reluctant to expose key intellectual property to permissionless licensing because they wanted to keep tight control over their assets.

The company said the new DATA Foundation will focus on data that AI labs cannot easily scrape from the open internet. In its announcement, Story argued that frontier AI companies now need data that is legal, high-quality, and traceable, rather than more undocumented material collected from public web pages.

As part of the rebrand, Story is launching Trace, an on-chain registry designed to track provenance and licensing for AI training data. The company said Trace will let AI firms verify data sets while allowing contributors to set and enforce licensing terms.

Muttoni will become CEO of the DATA Foundation, while Kled founder Avi Patel will join as chief data officer and adviser. Story founder Seung-yoon Lee will also remain involved as an adviser.

DATA token rises as crypto projects chase AI demand

Story’s move also brings Kled into the new structure as the flagship app on DATA. According to the company, Kled pays people for real-world data tasks such as recording videos of their surroundings or capturing ambient audio, creating licensed data sets that can be used for AI training.

Muttoni said Story’s incubated AI data-processing project, Poseidon, had already shown “immediate traction” with major AI firms and raised a $15 million seed round in July 2025. Under the new setup, Poseidon will serve as the processing layer of the protocol, while Trace will provide verification and licensing records on-chain.

Lee framed the new strategy around data that cannot be copied from websites, including physical movement, speech, driving behavior, and workplace activity.

He added that DATA is intended to prove the origin of real-world data, license it, and pay the people who created it.

The pivot places Story alongside other crypto firms turning toward AI as investor interest in the sector grows. Forbes reported Monday that Web3 gaming company Immutable is moving from gaming toward an AI marketing platform for game publishers. Coinbase also announced earlier this month that it is developing a tool that would let consumer AI models connect to a user’s exchange account and execute trades or strategies.