Story is rebranding as The DATA Foundation and launching the DATA Network with its flagship Kled AI integration, recording 1.5 billion user-contributed records on the platform. The Foundation is also introducing Trace, the first layer of public control for permitting, licensing, and data provenance at scale.
Today Story announced a strategic transition DATA Foundation (“DATA”) and launched Trace, an on-chain registry for the provenance and licensing of AI training data. The launch includes a flagship integration KledThe world’s largest on-demand human data marketplace, where 1.5 billion user-contributed records are recorded on the Network. Andrea Muttoni became CEO of the DATA Foundation, and Kled founder Avi Patel joined the advisory position as Chief Data Officer.
Artificial Intelligence Training Data Has Entered a Bottleneck
The move to DATA reflects where the market is most gravitated towards. AI training data has emerged as the most valuable and least solved category of intellectual property. Frontier AI labs faced a multibillion-dollar data bottleneck and the internet appeared to be effectively exhausted for scraping. The remaining supply is either expensive and bespoke or not legally documented; This leaves laboratories without the ability to source data at scale, prove its provenance, or guarantee its quality.
Legal risks are increasing as frontier laboratories inspect market-determining products through data obtained through opaque networks, often without clear records of permission or authorization. Quoted and undocumented data is no longer an option for enterprise-level AI.
“The challenge in AI has shifted from computing and architecture to sourcing and provenance. As the scrapable web crumbles, the question for labs is now who keeps the invoices,” he said. Andrea Muttoni, CEO related to DATA Foundation. “With Kled, we combine full data transparency and auditability with the largest repository of AI training data on the planet.”
Building Infrastructure for Trusted AI Data
Building on its original mission to deliver a data and intellectual property (IP) layer for the internet, DATA recognizes that the most critical form of data and IP in this era is AI training data. DATA Network brings the necessary infrastructure for artificial intelligence training, supported by its flagship integration with Kled. Starting today, Kled’s licensing rails and participant receipts run on the DATA Network, with additional support for stablecoin payments; This involves logging a staggering 1.5 billion user-provided records with programmatic legal safeguards.
“Frontier labs have exhausted the supply of high-quality, human-generated public texts available on the open web. Vendors who point out the source of data will win the next decade of contracts, and that’s our bet,” he said. Avi Patel, CEO and founder related to Kled And part-time consulting CDO … DATA Foundation. “Instead of blindly acquiring data, Kled’s data marketplace and DATA’s auditable chain of custody converge on what labs really need to license data with trust and transparency.”
Trace Launches as Public Inspection Layer for AI Training Data
Trace, DATA Foundation’s public audit and search platform, is also launched today, alongside the Kled integration. Trace creates immutable, confidential receipts for each contribution, allowing labs to verify the legitimacy of their datasets in seconds.
For each recording uploaded by users worldwide, a receipt for DATA will be generated, thus providing upstream compensation for contributors’ data and intellectual property. This addresses the urgent need for a verifiable and compliant AI education data market, which has become a legal and operational minefield.
A Wider Network of Participants
DATA’s thesis was validated by Poseidon, an AI data processing project developed by Story that cleans, normalizes, and scores raw human data for originality and quality, ensuring that every record that reaches the recipient is model-ready. Poseidon’s initial engagement with leading labs demonstrated the opportunity for AI training data. Numo, a participant application powered by a16z and now running entirely on DATA, is live today and brings thousands of participants into the AI economy in exchange for real-time payments.
“We started Story to build an IP layer for the Internet, and the most important intellectual property of this age is the data you can’t scrape: how a surgeon’s hands move, how a robot holds, how people talk, drive and work in the real world.” SY Lee, CEO of PIP Labs and strategic advisor to The DATA Foundation. “DATA is the next point of this belief: an end-to-end network that proves the provenance of real-world data, licenses it, and pays the people who do it.”
Token Migration and Ecosystem Continuity
The $IP token transitions one-to-one to $DATA without requiring any action from existing holders. Migration guide, change schedule and FAQ available Here.
About DATA Foundation
Data is the biggest bottleneck in frontier AI. Data models either need to be left aside between people and companies, or they don’t exist yet and won’t until the incentives are set to create them. DATA Network is the world’s AI control rails, built to answer three questions every lab asks: Can you source data at scale, prove where it comes from, and guarantee its quality?
Participant apps, including Numo and Kled, provide on-demand people data; Trace gives each record a public, tamper-proof receipt; Poseidon turns this into model-ready datasets so edge AI can continue to build on a foundation it can trust. $IP is now $DATA. More information is available at: datafdn.org.
to contact
YG
henri.vies@piplabs.xyz
Disclaimer: This is a paid post and should not be considered news/advice.
