The fundraise is the first time that a16z has led three rounds in a crypto firm since Coinbase.
The rise of artificial intelligence has made protecting creators’ intellectual property much more important recently.
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Posted August 21, 2024 at 8:00 am EST.
The company behind Story, a Layer 1 platform that tokenizes intellectual property, announced Wednesday that it had raised $80 million in a Series B funding round led by a16z, with additional participation from crypto VC firm Polychain. The fundraising represents the first time that a16z has led three rounds of fundraising in a crypto firm since it invested in centralized exchange Coinbase.
PIP Labs, the initial core contributor to Story that officially raised the funds, previously raised $29 million in its seed round and $25 million in its Series A. Together with several angel investments, PIP Labs has now raised $140 million. The company did not disclose PIP Labs’ valuation as of the latest round of funding.
Story estimates that intellectual property represents a $2 trillion asset class. And the rise of artificial intelligence has made protecting creators’ IP much more important recently, since this content serves as the basis for the training of large AI models.
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“Big tech is stealing IP without consent and capturing all the profit,” said S.Y Lee, co-founder and CEO of PIP Labs, in a press release. “The current state of AI completely destroys the incentive to create original IP for all of us. This surely will be negative for AI if no one has incentive to create something original for AI to train upon.”
Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner at a16z crypto, echoed Lee’s comments in the press release. “The economic covenant underlying the internet — content creators providing supply and content distributors providing demand — is being upended by the proliferation of AI,” Dixon said. “Blockchains are perfectly suited for large-scale economic coordination, and Story’s platform ensures creators are compensated for their IP feeding the AI systems.”
Story’s solution is to build the infrastructure to establish the sovereignty of creators’ IP and define usage parameters around their content without any intermediaries.
“Creators can programmatically declare their sovereign rights and licenses on their IP in computationally readable and writable metadata on a credibly neutral blockchain,” said Lee. “AI models can now license the creators’ data and compensate them easily without lawyers and legal documents, making Story a win-win for both IP and AI.”
Over 200 firms representing more than 20 million IPs are currently building on Story across sectors including IPFi, AI, and consumer markets, according to the company.
Other notable investors in PIP’s latest round include Stability AI’s SVP & Board Member Scott Trowbridge, K11 Founder Adrian Cheng, and digital art collector Cozomo de’ Medici.
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