Key Takeaways
- Andreessen Horowitz has led a $15M seed round for Poseidon, focused on decentralized AI training data.
- Poseidon will use Story Protocol’s programmable IP infrastructure to deliver legally safe, royalty-cleared datasets.
- The initiative addresses AI’s growing need for licensed, high-quality data at scale.
Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has invested in Poseidon, a startup building a decentralized data infrastructure aimed at solving one of AI’s most pressing challenges: access to high-quality, legally compliant training data.
Poseidon raised $15 million in a seed funding round to build its “full-stack decentralized data layer,” developed atop the IP-centric Story Protocol. The funding aims to fuel the development of physical AI systems powered by diverse, royalty-cleared datasets.
Tackling the Data Bottleneck in AI Development
Poseidon was incubated by the Story Protocol team to address what it calls “one of the most urgent and overlooked problems in artificial intelligence.” As foundation models hit the ceiling of accessible public data, AI developers are increasingly at risk of relying on unlicensed or ethically murky content.
Poseidon aims to solve that by creating a decentralized, IP-safe data marketplace that compensates contributors and ensures legal clarity for users.
“AI foundation models have already exhausted the most easily accessible training data,” said a16z Crypto founder Chris Dixon. “Poseidon’s decentralized data layer seeks to establish a new economic foundation for the internet, rewarding creators and suppliers for providing the diverse inputs that next-gen intelligent systems need.”
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Built on Story Protocol’s Programmable IP Layer
The project is built on the Story Protocol, a Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for the AI era. Story enables programmable IP through a “proof-of-creativity” mechanism that allows static intellectual property to become dynamic — facilitating automatic licensing, royalty distribution, and IP tracking.
Poseidon will leverage this infrastructure to allow AI developers to access curated, licensed training data with confidence in provenance and legality.
Story Protocol’s developer, PIP Labs, previously raised $80 million in a Series B round led by a16z Crypto, signaling the firm’s long-term commitment to building a tokenized IP economy.
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