As artificial intelligence creates new problems related to intellectual property theft, San Francisco-based startup Story Protocol has raised $80 million in a Series B funding round to solve this growing problem.
The new round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Polychain and others. Story was founded in 2022 and has raised $140 million to date, according to the company. The new round reportedly values the company at $2.25 billion.
Intellectual property theft is nothing new, but with the rise of AI, the risks have increased as generative AI models incorporate copyrighted material without permission for training and learning.
Story’s blockchain network allows IP owners to store their intellectual property on the platform and embed terms of use – such as royalties – in smart contracts. Essentially, the blockchain is designed to ensure that owners are compensated when their intellectual property is used.
“Big Tech steals intellectual property without consent and takes all the profits,” said SY Lee, co-founder of Story. “First, they will gobble up your intellectual property for their AI models without paying any compensation. … The current state of AI completely destroys the incentive to create original intellectual property for all of us.”
IP battle
The funding announcement comes just a day after OpenAI announced a partnership agreement with Condé Nast to display content from the company’s various publications, as AI companies face resistance from many media companies whose content they ingest.
Last year, OpenAI and its biggest backer Microsoft were sued by the New York Times over copyright issues related to the use of the newspaper’s intellectual property.
Other startups and media companies have also entered into partnership agreements to enable AI models to use their content for learning, while content producers want to showcase their intellectual property.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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