Story Protocol Rebrands as DATA Foundation in AI Training Data Pivot

Story Protocol announced Thursday it is rebranding as the DATA Foundation and abandoning its original intellectual property licensing strategy in favor of building infrastructure for sourcing, verifying, and licensing data used to train AI models. The native IP token will migrate to DATA on a one-to-one basis with no action required from holders.

Story Says AI Training Data Became the Strongest IP Use Case

Story Protocol originally set out to build an IP layer for the internet where digital assets could be registered and licensed on-chain. The project ran into a structural problem: companies behind valuable music, games, and brands were reluctant to expose key intellectual property to permissionless licensing, preferring to maintain tight control over their assets.

Andrea Muttoni, previously president and product chief at Story, will become CEO of the DATA Foundation. He said the pivot was driven by a clearer signal from the market.

“The answer became unambiguous: the form of IP pulling hardest was AI training data.”

Muttoni said the clearest validation came from Poseidon, an AI data-processing project incubated by Story that raised a $15 million seed round from a16z in July 2025.

Poseidon cleans, normalizes, and scores raw human data for authenticity and quality, ensuring datasets reaching buyers are model-ready. Under the new structure, Poseidon serves as the processing layer of the DATA Network.

Trace Registry and Kled Bring 1.5B Data Records to DATA Network

The rebrand includes the launch of Trace, an on-chain registry and public audit platform that generates immutable receipts for every data contribution, recording consent, licensing terms, and provenance.

AI firms can use Trace to verify the origin and licensing status of datasets before using them for model training, while contributors can set and enforce licensing terms and receive upstream compensation.

The launch also includes a flagship integration with Kled, an opt-in human data marketplace that brings more than 1.5 billion user-contributed records onto the DATA Network. Kled pays contributors for real-world data tasks including video recordings, ambient audio capture, and other forms of physical-world data that AI labs cannot easily scrape from the open internet.

Kled founder Avi Patel joins the DATA Foundation as chief data officer. Story founder Seung-yoon Lee will remain involved as an adviser. Kled continues to operate independently as its own marketplace.

What changes is that its licensing infrastructure and contributor receipts now run on the DATA Network, and its data is auditable through Trace.

DATA Token Rises 16.7% but Remains 98% Below IP Peak

The DATA token climbed 16.7% to $0.35 following Thursday’s announcement, outperforming a broader crypto market hit by inflation-driven selling. The gains came despite the token remaining approximately 98% below its September 2025 all-time high under the IP ticker.

The pivot places the DATA Foundation alongside other crypto projects repositioning toward AI. The primary intended customers are AI labs, which Muttoni said consistently ask data suppliers three questions: whether data can be sourced at scale, whether its origin can be proven, and whether its quality can be guaranteed.