The DATA Foundation Launches to Tackle AI’s Multi-Billion Dollar Training Data Bottleneck

June 25th, 2026 – Palo Alto, United States

Story rebrands as The DATA Foundation, launches DATA Network with flagship Kled AI integration, registering 1.5 billion user-contributed records on the platform

The Foundation also introduces Trace, the first public audit layer for consent, licensing, and data provenance at scale

Today, Story announces a strategic transition to become The DATA Foundation (“DATA”) and launches Trace, an onchain registry for AI training data provenance and licensing. The launch includes a flagship integration with Kled, the world’s largest opt-in human data marketplace, registering 1.5 billion user-contributed records on the Network. Andrea Muttoni becomes CEO of The DATA Foundation, and Kled’s founder, Avi Patel, joins in an advisor position as the Chief Data Officer. 

AI’s Training Data Has Hit a Bottleneck

The shift to DATA reflects where the market is pulling hardest. AI training data has emerged as the most valuable and least solved category of IP. Frontier AI labs have hit a multi-billion-dollar data bottleneck, where the internet has been effectively exhausted for scraping. The remaining supply is either expensive and bespoke or legally undocumented, leaving labs without a way to source data at scale, prove its provenance, or guarantee its quality.

The legal stakes are rising, as frontier labs stake out market-defining products on data sourced through opaque networks, often without clear records of consent or jurisdiction. Scraped and undocumented data is no longer an option for enterprise-grade AI.

“The challenge in AI has shifted from compute and architecture to sourcing and provenance. As the scrapable web fractures, the question for labs now is who is keeping the receipts,” said Andrea Muttoni, CEO of The DATA Foundation. “With Kled, we combine full data transparency and auditability with the largest pool of AI training data on the planet.”

Building the Infrastructure for Trusted AI Data

DATA builds on the original mission to deliver a data and intellectual property (IP) layer for the internet, recognizing that the form of data and IP that is most critical in this era is AI training data. DATA Network brings essential infrastructure for training AI, anchored by a flagship integration with Kled. Starting today, Kled’s licensing rails and contributor receipts run on DATA Network with added support for stable coin payouts, which involves registering a staggering 1.5 billion user-contributed records with programmatic legal safeguards.

“Frontier labs have exhausted the supply of high-quality, human-generated public text available on the open web. Suppliers showing data-sourcing provenance will win the next decade of deals, and that’s our bet,” said Avi Patel, CEO and founder of Kled and part-time advisory CDO of The DATA Foundation. “Instead of sourcing data blindly, Kled’s data marketplace and DATA’s auditable chain of custody converge on what labs actually need to license data with confidence and transparency.” 

Trace Launches as the Public Audit Layer for AI Training Data

Trace, The DATA Foundation’s public audit and search platform, also launches today alongside the Kled integration. Trace generates immutable, confidential receipts for every contribution, allowing labs to verify the legitimacy of datasets in seconds. For every single record uploaded by users worldwide, a receipt on DATA will be generated, enabling upstream compensation for contributors’ data and intellectual property. This addresses an urgent need for a verifiable and compliant AI training data market, which has become a legal and operational minefield.

A Wider Contributor Network

DATA’s thesis was validated by Poseidon, the AI data processing project incubated by Story, which cleans, normalizes, and scores raw human data for authenticity and quality, ensuring every record that reaches a buyer is model-ready. Poseidon’s early traction with frontier labs proved the AI training data opportunity. Backed by a16z and now running entirely on DATA, its contributor app Numo is live today, bringing thousands of contributors into the AI economy in exchange for real-time payouts. 

“We started Story to build an IP layer for the internet, and the most important IP of this era is the data you can’t scrape: how a surgeon’s hands move, how a robot grips, how people speak, drive, and work in the real world,” said SY Lee, CEO of PIP Labs and strategic adviser to The DATA Foundation. “DATA is where that conviction goes next: an end-to-end network that proves real-world data’s origin, licenses it, and pays the people who made it. “

Token Migration and Ecosystem Continuity

The $IP token migrates to DATA one-to-one with no action required from existing holders. Migration guidance, exchange timing, and an FAQ are available here.

About The DATA Foundation

Data is the biggest bottleneck in frontier AI. The data models need most either sits siloed with people and companies, or doesn’t exist yet, and won’t, until incentives are aligned to create it. DATA Network is the world’s AI audit rails built to answer the three questions every lab asks: can you source data at scale, prove where it came from, and guarantee its quality? Contributor apps including Numo and Kled supply opt-in human data; Trace gives every record a public, tamper-proof receipt; Poseidon turns it into model-ready datasets, so frontier AI can keep advancing on a foundation it can trust. $IP is now DATA. More information available at datafdn.org. 

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