The blockchain startup Story Protocol has changed its name to the DATA Foundation and is now focusing on building blockchain infrastructure for AI training data instead of intellectual property licensing. The company says its new goal is to help AI developers check where training data comes from, confirm user consent, and manage licensing more clearly.
Backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the group believes blockchain can help solve one of AI’s biggest problems: getting trusted, legally sourced, high-quality training data.
This rebranding comes as AI companies face more legal pressure over the data used to train large language models. Copyright lawsuits, more regulation, and less free internet content have made it harder to find verified data. DATA Foundation wants to solve this with an on-chain registry called Trace, which records ownership, licensing, consent, and payment info for datasets without storing the actual data.
As part of this change, Kled founder Avi Patel has joined as adviser and chief data officer, and Story president Andrea Muttoni is now CEO. The foundation is also working with Kled, a marketplace where people can share data for AI training and get paid. The company says this integration already includes over 1.5 billion user-contributed records.
Another key part of the plan is Poseidon, an AI data-processing platform that cleans, checks, and scores human-made datasets. With its contributor app, users get paid in stablecoins or regular money for sharing real information that AI developers can license. The company is also building tools to spot AI-generated, copied, or stolen content before it gets into training datasets.
Leaders at the company say their original idea of making an open intellectual property network changed when they saw that big brands did not want to put valuable IP into open systems. Instead, they found much more demand for verified, licensed data, which AI companies need as free internet content runs out.
This shift is part of a bigger trend in crypto, where many blockchain companies are moving toward artificial intelligence. By combining blockchain’s transparency with AI’s need for trusted data, DATA Foundation wants to build an infrastructure that lets developers prove where data comes from and makes sure contributors are paid fairly for their information.
Today, Story becomes The DATA Foundation.$IP is now $DATA. The Story Network is now DATA Network, tracking 1B+ data records with a singular mission: to become the trust layer for all AI training data.
Welcome to The DATA Foundation. pic.twitter.com/u54K9kD1n5
— The DATA Foundation (@datafdn) June 25, 2026
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