Story Protocol rebrands to DATA Foundation in AI pivot
Story Protocol is rebranding as the DATA Foundation and shifting from blockchain-based IP licensing to AI data infrastructure. The new focus is on supplying “clean, verified, licensed data” for AI training, which it says has become scarce as frontier labs exhaust easily scraped internet data. The pivot includes launching Trace, an on-chain registry for AI training data provenance and licensing, and integrating with Kled, a data marketplace that pays people to collect real-world training data such as video and audio. Story says Poseidon, an AI data-processing project it incubated, will become the protocol’s processing layer. Leadership is also changing: president and product chief Andrea Muttoni will become CEO of DATA, while Kled founder Avi Patel will join as chief data officer and adviser. Story founder Seung-yoon Lee will advise the new foundation. The move reflects a broader trend of crypto projects repositioning toward AI amid stronger demand and funding for the sector.
