Story (@StoryProtocol): July Recap: Poseidon's $15M Seed Round, the Grayscale Story Trust, and Our New Chief AI Officer

July Recap: Poseidon's $15M Seed Round, the Grayscale Story Trust, and Our New Chief AI Officer July was a month of relentless progress. We welcomed Sandeep Chinchali as our new Chief AI Officer, whose deep expertise in edge computing and robotics will guide our strategy at the intersection of AI and IP. We incubated Poseidon, our new data infrastructure layer designed to unlock real-world, rights-cleared training data - a long-standing bottleneck for physical AI systems. With strong conviction and momentum, Poseidon is initiating its launch backed by a $15M seed round led by a16z crypto. And to cap off the month, we announced the Grayscale Story Trust, giving accredited investors exposure to $IP, the token powering Story's AI-native infrastructure for the $80T+ IP economy. Each milestone points to the same direction: programmable IP is going mainstream. As institutional validation continues to grow, it’s clear that IP is on track to become one of the most important asset classes of the AI era. As we enter August, here’s a look back at the progress we made towards achieving Story’s Chapter 2 vision in July Story Media Earlier in the month, S.Y. Lee sat down with the Rollup at Permissionless to go deep on programmable IP and establish the next chapter of Story's vision. In mid July, @SPChinchali also chatted with the Rollup about his new role as Chief AI Officer and the emergence of real world data as a critical new meta in AI innovation. Once the news of Poseidon dropped, S.Y. appeared on Bloomberg to illustrate the next wave of AI, how it will layer into the physical world, and why real world data is in focus for Story at large. Bringing July to a close, S.Y. joined a live broadcast with @Grayscale to discuss the Story Trust - playback forthcoming. Story Ecosystem V2 of ip.world landed with a splash. With a fresh UI and a toolbox of features that capture virility on the internet, ip.world is where memes can re-capture their value. Just ask Evil Larry, the viral TikTok kitty whose owners earned over $1,000,000 USD from claiming the IP connected to the $LARRY token. Meet Poseidon, the new Story eco app built for next wave of AI innovation with infra for collecting, curating, and licensing high-quality, real-world training data. You can follow @psdnai or key deep-dives on the exciting new real world data meta as it continues to emerge. Story announced a new collaboration with World, which will give creators the ability to prove they’re human, keep their IP authentic, and scale name, image, and likeness onchain. Foundation President Andrea Muttoni (aka @devrelius) told The Block: "Proving humanity and intellectual property are inherently linked. As AI gets more and more capable and sophisticated, having a way to distinguish human-created IP will become increasingly important." @ABLO_Official was selected for the most recent Warner Bros cohort. The custom merch platform lets anyone design and sell products globally, with IP protection and royalties powered by Story. Ecosystem milestone: Verio hit 25M TVL, 5M in $IP locked.