Story Protocol Developer Raises $80M Series B, Led by A16z, for Intellectual Property Chain

On hump day, PIP Labs, who were the pioneers of Story, declared a Series B funding round worth $80 million, with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as the main investor.

AI firms have amassed an enormous amount of creative web content to train their large language models (LLMs). This practice has sparked legal disputes between creators and tech giants, such as OpenAI, who are facing copyright infringement accusations from The New York Times. Similarly, YouTubers have filed lawsuits against Nvidia (NVDA) for using scraped content to build a video model without proper compensation. Simultaneously, News Corp, the proprietor of the Wall Street Journal, has entered into an agreement with OpenAI worth over $250 million, licensing its content for LLM training.

In a recent interview, PIP Labs’ co-founder and CEO SY Lee highlighted that AI models can’t advance significantly without unique intellectual property (PIP). He underscored his point by stating that AI is essentially collecting, appropriating your data unwillingly, and profiting from it, while failing to distribute the profits back to the original creators.

Story Protocol operates by transforming intellectual property into flexible and customizable building blocks, referred to as “IP Building Blocks” – these can be leased, managed, and monetized using smart contracts on a blockchain. Lee clarified that Story empowers creators to maintain control over their data by incorporating licensing agreements and royalty conditions directly into their intellectual properties.

With Story, creators can incorporate licensing agreements right into their intellectual property, thereby making it mandatory for anyone utilizing it to follow their specified guidelines. Essentially, this means claiming ownership and protection over your data, stating ‘Respect my data. This is my intellectual property.’

According to Lee, it’s crucial to discuss the responsibilities AI companies have towards creatives in the entertainment industry. He pointed out that, while Google once helped boost traffic to content and sadly caused the demise of many local newspapers, current AI technology eradicates the motivation for everyone to produce original intellectual property entirely.

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The primary network for the story is anticipated to go live towards the end of the current year. More comprehensive information will likely be disclosed during the Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul, which takes place in September.