Story Protocol, a firm focused on building the world’s first IP blockchain, has announced $140M total fundraising. a16zcrypto is the leading investor across the three fundraising sessions (Seed, Series A, and B). During the recent Series B fundraising round, Story secured $80M led by a16z crypto with a strategic co-investment from Polychain.
In a statement, Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner said “Today we’re announcing that a16zcrypto is leading an $80M Series B financing of PIP Labs, developer of storyprotocol. PIP Labs is building the necessary infrastructure for a new covenant in the AI age.”
“Blockchains are perfectly suited for large-scale economic coordination, and Story’s platform ensures creators are compensated for their IP feeding the AI systems,” he added.
Speaking on the investment, Olaf Carlson-Wee, Polychain Capital’s founder and CEO said: “What Bitcoin did for money and finance, Story is doing for content and IP. Big tech is geometrically increasing their monopoly power, and the world needs a decentralized intellectual property system that brings the ownership of data and IP back to the people in the same way Bitcoin brought sovereignty to money and finance after the global financial crisis.”
Existing and new participants in Series B include Hashed, WME, dao5, Norm, Foresight Ventures, SparkLabs Global, Two Small Fish Ventures, Samsung Next, Mirana Ventures, and others.
Top angel investors in the web3 space participated including Balaji, Adrian Cheng, 0xdesigner, ZAGABOND.ETH, dingaling, Bang Sihyuk, HDF, Cozomo de’ Medici, Roham Gharegozlou, Bharat Krymo, Giulio Xiloyannis, Chang Kim, xAlliance DAO, Paris Hilton, Duncan Clark, Vera, Spirit DAO, Nicolas Berggruen, Charlie Songhurst, David Bonderman, Scott Trowbridge, Kyungin Jung, Alexei Falin, Alexander Salniko, Mark Tetto, Marisa Chearavanont and others.
According to Programmable IP (PIP). the developers of Story, the Layer-1 blockchain will tokenize the multi-trillion-dollar asset class of intellectual property. Story IP allows creators to control their IP, set usage rules, and build a global network. Fans can remix, sell, and promote their work within this network.
Seung Yoon (S. Y.) Lee, co-founder and CEO of PIP Labs said, “Story will ensure a sustainable and flourishing path for the internet’s creativity that benefits both creators and AI, without any intermediaries. Creators can programmatically declare their sovereign rights and licenses on their IP,” and 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.”
The blockchain has attracted ecosystem partners across various sectors including Infra, AI+AIGC, Social, DeFi/IPFI, and Creator platforms. Over 200 teams with 20M+ addressable IPs from these sectors are actively building on Story IP. builders, creators, and visionaries interested in building on the chain can apply to Story Academy where they can solve real problems.
Story mainnet will launch later this year bringing full compatibility with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Jason Zhao, co-founder and chief product officer at PIP Labs said the team has implemented numerous improvements to optimize the protocol.
For more on Story Protocal, visit story.foundation.