AI giants like Anthropic, OpenAI and Stability AI have confronted quite a lot of warmth over how they’ve scraped information and rode rough-shod over others’ mental property when coaching and working their foundational fashions. Now, a startup referred to as Story — which in the present day is saying $83 million in funding — is bidding to rebalance the scales with a blockchain-based platform to assist IP house owners monitor utilization extra successfully.
Within the phrases of CEO and co-founder, S.Y. Lee, the purpose is to construct a extra “sustainable” IP ecosystem match for the subsequent era of digital customers and builders. The startup says its method is consider IP like Lego and use blockchain to make that doable. “Anybody can fork and remix your IP permissionlessly when you seize the upside,” Lee stated in an interview with coinagebuzz. (Slightly ironic to label it “Lego”, given the various IP battles the toy brick firm has confronted through the years.)
The spherical is being led by Andreessen Horowitz, particularly its a16z crypto division, with crypto investor Polychain Capital additionally collaborating, alongside Scott Trowbridge (the SVP of Stability AI); K11 Founder Adrian Cheng; and Cozomo de’ Medici, the digital artwork collector who took on an alias to evoke the well-known Renaissance household. The brand new funding, a Sequence B, brings the overall raised by Story and its father or mother PIP Labs to $143 million.
With the ability to higher seize the worth of IP when it will get used has the potential to herald some huge cash to license house owners. In anticipation of its platform getting traction and dealing as envisioned, Story itself is realising some important worth, too. We perceive from sources near the corporate that the startup is now valued at $2.25 billion post-money.
Story is constructing what it describes as an “IP blockchain” — a system and platform by which it envisions that creators will be capable of assert their possession on a chunk of content material, set utilization parameters round that IP, after which let others license and use it.
How precisely that can work in observe nonetheless stays to be seen, although. The plan is to make use of the funding to proceed constructing out the product — aiming for a business launch later this 12 months, per Lee. So far, the startup has been including customers by the use of a free, closed beta.
It says greater than 200 groups — and “greater than 20 million addressable IPs” — are registered on the platform to date, a results of partnerships with trend design instrument Ablo, Japanese comedian platform Sekai and artwork collaboration startup Magma.
Chris Dixon, who co-led the funding for a16z with Carra Wu, believes that new functions based mostly on generative AI and different developments like will probably be massively disrupting the financial fashions that historically underpinned how folks made visible artwork or literature or music (or some other type of “content material” because it’s sometimes described as of late when it’s digital). To maintain the marketplace for creativity thriving, a brand new method of monetizing content material must be launched, is the thesis.
“A brand new wave of AI-powered engines like google give complete solutions as an alternative of guiding customers to web sites. Social networks are more and more populated by AI-generated pictures and movies,” Dixon writes in a weblog put up. “These AI programs had been seemingly educated on unique, human-created content material however usually don’t credit score or cite their sources. If there’s no attribution or compensation, what incentive will there be to publish unique creations on the open web?”
AI programs are only one space the place content material is getting used, and shall be used sooner or later, however they’re a major one, which is why Story just isn’t the one participant on this area. Simply final week one other startup, referred to as Sahara AI, introduced $43M in funding to construct out its personal method to addressing the query of how greatest to trace and monetise IP within the age of AI.
“Story distinguishes itself from Sahara by specializing in the IP and information layer of AI options quite than the prevailing AI infrastructure stack,” Lee informed me in response to a query about how the 2 are completely different from one another. “Whereas Sahara seems to focus on mental property issues, these are principally targeted on information which could be very completely different from the authorized regime of IP. Story sees potential for partnership because the IP layer of options like Sahara and Ritual. We are able to develop into shut companions.”
Lee himself has had a front-row seat to the story (so to talk) of content material within the digital age. He himself began out as an enterprising journalist within the U.Ok. when he based a platform referred to as byline.com in 2014. He then constructed a crowdsourced, serialized fiction app referred to as Radish (a competitor to the likes of Inkitt and Wattpad), which ultimately he offered to Kakao for $440M.
Story — which Lee co-founded with Jason Zhao, the CPO — is, in a method, the pure development of those earlier experiences.
“For those who take a look at all the things from, you recognize, Netflix to Disney, they pour billions of {dollars} into content material, however actually it’s billions of {dollars} into advertising and marketing,” he stated. “It’s type of a zero sum battle for consideration to get extra customers and subscribers.”
His earlier firm, Radish, getting acquired for $440M made him “rethink the dynamics of the market”, he stated.
“I used to be drawing quite a lot of my enterprise capital cash out for advertising and marketing,” he added, saying that is his try to construct a distinct mannequin to keep away from that for creators of the longer term.
Whether or not it can work, and whether or not creators need to use it, are questions which can be but to be answered.
Those that consider they’ve a lock on easy methods to make investments for future eventualities are bullish, although.
“What Bitcoin did for cash and finance, Story is doing for content material and IP,” stated Olaf Carlson-Wee, the founder and CEO of Polychain Capital, in an announcement. “Web3’s first section was triggered by the 2008 monetary disaster, resulting in a revolution on cash by way of networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Now, developments in AI are triggering a second section in Web3, which can revolutionize IP.”
