Revamping AI Data Infrastructure: Blockchain Startup Story Garners $15 Million Seed Investment

On October 23, blockchain-powered intellectual property (IP) platform Story announced a landmark achievement as its incubated project, Poseidon, secured $15 million during a seed funding round. This round was spearheaded by Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) renowned crypto division, marking a significant milestone for AI development. The funding, which translates to roughly KRW 20.8 billion, demonstrates growing confidence in Poseidon's vision for decentralized data infrastructure tailored for artificial intelligence (AI).

Poseidon's core innovation tackles a pressing bottleneck in advancing next-gen AI systems: the creation and management of high-quality training datasets. These datasets are essential for technologies like robotics and multimodal AI models but are often challenging to source and utilize effectively. By leveraging Story’s groundbreaking programmable IP blockchain, Poseidon ensures secure data tracking, introduces transparent legal frameworks, and promotes equitable revenue sharing among contributors and developers.

Empowering AI with Revolutionary Data Infrastructure

Poseidon is setting a new precedent with its platform, which specializes in sourcing and commercializing "long-tail" datasets—data types historically difficult to access. This includes valuable resources like first-person POV (point-of-view) robotic training datasets, multilingual audio samples, and sensor-driven simulation data. Designed for interoperability, Poseidon integrates seamlessly with Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN), ensuring secondary data utility and maximizing usability for diverse AI applications.

Chris Dixon, general partner at a16z crypto, hailed Poseidon as “a transformative standard for AI data infrastructure.” Elaborating on its impact, he added, “Poseidon alleviates critical barriers in AI development while offering fair compensation to data contributors, fostering a more sustainable and collaborative AI ecosystem.”

The Minds Powering Poseidon

Spearheading Poseidon are AI luminaries Sandeep Chinchali, a distinguished Stanford AI research alumnus, and seasoned machine learning engineer Sarick Shah, both of whom bring a wealth of expertise to the project. Overseeing its strategic development is Seungyoon Lee, the CEO of PIP Labs, Story’s parent company, who serves as project chair.

Lee underscores Poseidon’s potential to resolve pressing legal and ownership pitfalls that AI labs and enterprises commonly face. “Poseidon epitomizes Story’s vision for data and IP innovation,” Lee noted. “Its framework not only addresses ownership disputes but also propels game-changing advancements within the AI training ecosystem.”

Bridging Blockchain and AI for a Data-Driven Future

Poseidon’s decentralized approach to data management has the potential to fast-track AI progression by fostering a paradigm of fairness, trust, and innovation in an increasingly data-centric global economy. With investors closely watching its development, Poseidon is poised to set new benchmarks in the evolving intersection of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence—a field rich with untapped potential.

This $15 million funding milestone marks the beginning of what could be a revolutionary shift in how data is collected, shared, and monetized for AI, creating ripple effects across industries that rely on precise, high-quality datasets. The future of AI infrastructure is here, and Poseidon is leading the charge.