Story Protocol has recently secured $80M in a Series B funding round co-led by a16z Crypto and Polychain Capital.
The development of Story Protocol, a layer-1 blockchain expressly designed for managing intellectual property (IP), is being supported by a $80-million Series B funding round co-led by a16z Crypto and Polychain Capital. PIP Labs, a Palo Alto-based startup, has made the announcement.
Hashed, Foresight Ventures, Samsung Next, Mirana Ventures, SparkLabs Global, and angel investors were among the numerous investors who participated in the round. PIP Labs has received $140 million in funding, with a16z Crypto participating in three financing stages, from seed to Series B.
Bloomberg reports that the startup’s valuation has increased to $2.25 billion due to this most recent round; however, PIP Labs has not verified or denied the figure.
The blockchain of Story Protocol enables creators to assert sovereignty over their IPs using tokenisation.
This implies they can formally register their IPs on the blockchain, establishing ownership and specific regulations for using, sharing, or modifying their IPs. It is a method by which creators can safeguard their work and retain control over its use by others.
“The foundational input that large models train on is IP.” In other words, the protocol acknowledged in an announcement on social media platform X that AI will likely encounter a ceiling in the absence of IP.
The emergence of artificial intelligence solutions has enabled the use of intellectual property as input data for trained models. The protocol aims to help creators receive compensation when their work is used to train AI models by incorporating blockchain technology and addressing issues such as dark data sets.
IP finance (IPFi), AI, and consumer markets are among the sectors in which the technology is currently being implemented, with over 200 teams and over 20 million IP assets being developed on the platform, as per PIP Labs.
Messari’s data indicates that the Web3 fundraising landscape experienced a substantial increase in July, with transaction volume increasing by 72.9% month-over-month to $1.44 billion. Pantera Capital and Mirana Ventures were the primary venture firms that made significant early-stage investments during this time.
