AI giants like Anthropic, OpenAI and Stability AI have confronted a number 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 known as Story — which in the present day is saying $80 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 goal is to construct a extra “sustainable” IP ecosystem match for the subsequent technology 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 whilst you seize the upside,” Lee stated in an interview with advasky. (A bit ironic to label it “Lego”, given the numerous 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 taking part, 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 full raised by Story and its mother or father PIP Labs to $143 million.
Having 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 to assert their possession on a bit of content material, set utilization parameters round that IP, after which let others license and use it.
How precisely that may work in follow 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 yr, per Lee. To this point, 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 thus far, a results of partnerships with style design device 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 it is going to be massively disrupting the financial fashions that historically underpinned how individuals made visible artwork or literature or music (or every other type of “content material” because it’s sometimes described nowadays when it’s digital). To maintain the marketplace for creativity thriving, a brand new approach 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 photos and movies,” Dixon writes in a weblog publish. “These AI methods have been probably skilled on authentic, human-created content material however typically don’t credit score or cite their sources. If there’s no attribution or compensation, what incentive will there be to publish authentic creations on the open web?”
AI methods are only one space the place content material is getting used, and can be used sooner or later, however they’re a big one, which is why Story will not be the one participant on this area. Simply final week one other startup, known 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 reasonably than the present AI infrastructure stack,” Lee informed me in response to a query about how the 2 are totally different from one another. “Whereas Sahara seems to focus on mental property considerations, these are largely targeted on information which may be very totally 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 turn out to be 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.Okay. when he based a platform known as byline.com in 2014. He then constructed a crowdsourced, serialized fiction app known as Radish (a competitor to the likes of Inkitt and Wattpad), which finally he offered to Kakao for $440M.
Story — which Lee co-founded with Jason Zhao, the CPO — is, in a approach, the pure development of those earlier experiences.
“In the event you have a look at every little thing from, you understand, Netflix to Disney, they pour billions of {dollars} into content material, however actually it’s billions of {dollars} into advertising,” 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 a number of my enterprise capital cash out for advertising,” he added, saying that is his try and construct a special mannequin to keep away from that for creators of the longer term.
Whether or not it would work, and whether or not creators need to use it, are questions which might be but to be answered.
Those that consider they’ve a lock on methods to make investments for future situations 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 a press release. “Web3’s first section was triggered by the 2008 monetary disaster, resulting in a revolution on cash by means of networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Now, developments in AI are triggering a second section in Web3, which can revolutionize IP.”
