Story Rebrands as The DATA Foundation, Launches DATA Network with Flagship Kled AI Integration
Palo Alto, United States – June 25th, 2026 – Story has announced a significant strategic pivot, rebranding as The DATA Foundation (“DATA”) and launching the DATA Network, a new infrastructure layer for AI training data. The initiative includes a flagship integration with Kled, a prominent opt-in human data marketplace, which has already registered 1.5 billion user-contributed records on the network.
The DATA Foundation is also introducing Trace, its inaugural public audit layer designed for consent, licensing, and data provenance at scale. Andrea Muttoni has been appointed CEO of The DATA Foundation, while Kled’s founder, Avi Patel, will serve as Chief Data Officer in an advisory capacity.
AI’s Training Data Faces a Critical Bottleneck
The transition to The DATA Foundation reflects a pronounced shift in market demand, with AI training data emerging as a highly valuable yet largely unresolved intellectual property challenge. Leading AI laboratories are encountering a multi-billion-dollar data bottleneck, as the readily available data on the internet has been largely exhausted through scraping. The remaining data sources are either prohibitively expensive and custom-made, or lack proper documentation and legal standing, leaving AI labs struggling to source data at scale, verify its origin, or ensure its quality.
The legal ramifications are escalating, as frontier AI labs are developing market-defining products based on data acquired through opaque channels, often without clear consent or jurisdictional clarity. The era of scraping and using undocumented data is rapidly concluding for enterprise-grade AI development.
“The primary challenge in AI has moved from computational power and architecture to data sourcing and provenance,” stated Andrea Muttoni, CEO of The DATA Foundation. “As the easily scrapable web fragments, the critical question for AI labs is who is meticulously documenting their data sources. With Kled, we are uniting complete data transparency and auditability with the world’s most extensive repository of AI training data.”
Building the Infrastructure for Trusted AI Data
DATA builds upon its original mission to establish a data and intellectual property (IP) layer for the internet, recognizing that AI training data is the most crucial form of data and IP in the current technological landscape. The DATA Network provides essential infrastructure for AI training, anchored by its integration with Kled. Effective immediately, Kled’s licensing protocols and contributor records will operate on the DATA Network, with enhanced support for stablecoin payouts. This integration encompasses the registration of an impressive 1.5 billion user-contributed records, fortified with programmatic legal safeguards.
“Frontier AI labs have depleted the supply of high-quality, human-generated public text available on the open web,” said Avi Patel, CEO and founder of Kled and part-time advisory CDO of The DATA Foundation. “Suppliers who can demonstrate data sourcing provenance will dominate the deals of the next decade, and that is our strategic focus. Instead of sourcing data blindly, Kled’s data marketplace and DATA’s auditable chain of custody converge to provide labs with exactly what they need to license data confidently and transparently.”
Trace Launches as the Public Audit Layer for AI Training Data
Trace, The DATA Foundation’s public audit and search platform, also debuts today, coinciding with the Kled integration. Trace generates immutable, confidential receipts for every data contribution, enabling AI labs to verify the legitimacy of datasets within seconds. For each record uploaded by users globally, a receipt will be generated on DATA, facilitating upstream compensation for contributors’ data and intellectual property. This addresses a pressing need for a verifiable and compliant market for AI training data, which has become a complex legal and operational minefield.
A Wider Contributor Network
DATA’s foundational principles have been validated by Poseidon, an AI data processing project incubated by Story. Poseidon cleans, normalizes, and scores raw human data for authenticity and quality, ensuring that every record delivered to buyers is ready for AI model training. Poseidon’s early success with frontier labs underscored the significant opportunity in the AI training data sector. Now operating entirely on DATA and backed by a16z, its contributor application, Numo, is live, onboarding thousands of contributors into the AI economy in exchange for real-time payouts.
“We founded Story with the vision of building an IP layer for the internet, and the most vital IP of this era is the data that cannot be scraped – the nuances of a surgeon’s movements, the way a robot grips an object, or how people speak, drive, and work in real-world scenarios,” commented SY Lee, CEO of PIP Labs and strategic advisor to The DATA Foundation. “DATA represents the evolution of that conviction: an end-to-end network that proves the origin of real-world data, licenses it, and compensates the individuals who create it.”
Token Migration and Ecosystem Continuity
The $IP token will be migrated to the $DATA token on a one-to-one basis, with no action required from existing holders. Guidance on the migration process, exchange timing, and a comprehensive FAQ are available.
About The DATA Foundation
Data represents the most significant bottleneck in frontier AI development. The data models that AI requires are often siloed within individuals and companies, or do not yet exist and will not be created without aligned incentives. The DATA Network serves as the world’s AI audit rails, designed to answer the three fundamental questions every AI lab faces: can data be sourced at scale, can its origin be proven, and can its quality be guaranteed? Contributor applications, including Numo and Kled, provide opt-in human data; Trace offers a public, tamper-proof receipt for every data record; and Poseidon transforms this data into model-ready datasets, enabling frontier AI to advance on a foundation of trust. The $IP token is now $DATA. Further information can be found at datafdn.org.
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