DATA Foundation emerges as Story Protocol shifts focus to artificial intelligence
The blockchain company formerly known as Story Protocol has transformed into the DATA Foundation, targeting AI companies facing a shortage of web data available for training purposes.
A layer-1 blockchain platform that centered its operations on intellectual property licensing, Story Protocol, is making a strategic shift toward artificial intelligence while simultaneously rebranding itself as the DATA Foundation.
According to Thursday's announcement from the firm, its new direction involves constructing "essential infrastructure for training AI," which the organization characterized as "the most valuable and least solved category of IP."
"Frontier AI labs have hit a multi-billion-dollar data bottleneck, where the internet has been effectively exhausted for scraping," the company said. "The remaining supply is either expensive and bespoke or legally undocumented, leaving labs without a way to source data at scale, prove its provenance, or guarantee its quality."
This transformation makes Story among the newest blockchain ventures to embrace AI amid growing investment capital and enthusiasm surrounding the emerging technology. Several cryptocurrency mining operations have similarly transitioned toward operating the powerful computing systems required for artificial intelligence applications, which has significantly enhanced their earnings during a downturn in digital currency markets.
According to the company's statement, it is simultaneously rolling out Trace, an on-chain registry designed for AI training data provenance and licensing purposes, while also establishing integration with Kled, an organization that supplies licensable data collections for artificial intelligence training operations.
The DATA Foundation will be headed by Andrea Muttoni, who previously served as Story's president and product chief, taking on the role of CEO. Meanwhile, Avi Patel, the founder of Kled, will assume positions as chief data officer and adviser.
According to Muttoni, approximately one year ago, Story had "set out to build the IP layer for the internet," but the companies behind the "most valuable music, games, and brands guard their most valuable IPs jealously, and the open nature of permissionless licensing clashed with the very control the companies want to keep."
Muttoni further explained that Story discovered that an AI data-processing initiative it had been nurturing, known as Poseidon, demonstrated "immediate traction" among leading AI companies and successfully secured a $15 million seed round in July 2025.
According to Muttoni, in an era where AI corporations "effectively run out of internet to scrape," entities capable of delivering "clean, verified, licensed data at scale are going to become some of the most valuable businesses ever built."
Muttoni elaborated that Poseidon will function as "the processing layer of the protocol," whereas Trace, serving as the on-chain registry, will enable AI corporations to authenticate complete data sets while empowering contributors to maintain enforcement of their specified terms.
According to Muttoni's statement, Kled, a platform that compensates individuals for performing tasks including recording videos of their environments or collecting ambient sound recordings for AI training purposes, will additionally emerge as the "flagship app" operating on DATA.
"The most important IP of this era is the data you can't scrape: how a surgeon's hands move, how a robot grips, how people speak, drive, and work in the real world,"
Story founder Seung-yoon Lee, who will serve as an adviser to DATA
"DATA is where that conviction goes next: an end-to-end network that proves real-world data's origin, licenses it, and pays the people who made it," he added.
The strategic repositioning by Story arrives during a period when additional prominent cryptocurrency platforms are undertaking similar transformations focused on AI applications.
A Monday report from Forbes revealed that Immutable, a major force in Web3 gaming, is redirecting its efforts away from gaming to introduce an AI-powered marketing platform specifically designed for game publishing companies.
Earlier this month, cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase revealed plans to introduce a new tool enabling consumer AI models to establish connections with users' exchange accounts and perform trades or implement strategies, representing the company's ambition to evolve beyond functioning solely as a cryptocurrency trading platform.