Quick take:
- Andreessen Horowitz crypto investment arm led the round.
- The startup was incubated by Story Protocol, also an A16z crypto portfolio company.
- Poseidon has already partnered with an unnamed company described as a top robotics firm and an audio foundation model team sourcing dialect-rich speech data.
Poseidon, a decentralized AI data layer built on Story Protocol, has raised $15 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz and A16z. The startup was incubated by Story Protocol, also an A16z crypto portfolio company.
Story Protocol is a layer-1 blockchain designed primarily to secure intellectual property rights. Poseidon’s fundraising comes at a time when generative AI is threatening intellectual property rights.
According to Sandeep Chinchali, Poseidon co-founder and chief AI officer at Story, Poseidon has already partnered with an unnamed company described as a top robotics firm and an audio foundation model team sourcing dialect-rich speech data.
Poseidon “combines auto-labeling with human-in-the-loop refinement to scale data acquisition without sacrificing quality,” Chinchali told Blockworks, adding that the team “prioritizes targeted data collection based on real-world failure modes and validates every dataset using metadata checks and Story’s programmable IP licensing.”
a16z Crypto founder Chris Dixon said in a statement: “AI foundation models have already exhausted the most easily accessible training data. 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.”
Poseidon’s decentralised data layer will enable AI developers to access IP-safe, legally cleared training data using Story’s programmable IP layer and immutable IP registry. Applicable uses include robotics, autonomous vehicles, wearables, and AI agents that require more data than what is available on the internet.
Chinchali said Poseidon is also partnering with universities and Fortune 500 companies, building AI capabilities.
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