PIP Labs, which operates Story Protocol, a Layer 1 community for licensing and sustaining mental property, has laid off a number of staff to discover alternatives associated to synthetic intelligence.
The corporate mentioned the cuts embrace 5 full-time staff and three contractors, representing about 10% of the employees contributing to numerous organizational tales. decryption. In accordance with Andrea Muttoni, chief protocol officer at Story, this contains Story Basis and the infrastructure layer Poseidon.
“PIP Labs is narrowing its focus via small staffing changes,” she mentioned in an announcement. decryptionfamous that the corporate is beginning to lean into IP infrastructure for AI, with a give attention to AI buying and selling knowledge and the emergence of AI brokers.
in Telegram Messages reviewed by decryptiona former worker mentioned the layoffs involved 15% of the employees behind Story Protocol, together with employees engaged on occasions.
When Story introduced an $80 million Collection B funding spherical in 2024, PIP Labs positioned The community is getting used as a brand new method to scale back friction for creators by permitting them to license and remix their IP with out the necessity for rent-seeking attorneys. Story is designed to automate royalty funds via programmable licenses.
The funding spherical valued PIP Labs at $2 billion and was led by enterprise capital big Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from people together with Walt Disney Imagineering government Scott Trowbridge and a pseudonymous NFT collector. Kosomo de Medici.
The community debuted final February with its native IP token, which has fallen 86% over the previous yr to round $0.80. CoinGecko. In September, the token reached an all-time excessive of $14.78, equal to a market capitalization of roughly $3.4 billion.
That very same month, a story-based meme coin modeled after Pink Fong, creator of “Child Shark,” collapsed. controversy arose Points surrounding the Korean firm's IP behind YouTube's viral hits. Relating to X, Story apologized for the confusion and famous that it was not concerned in licensing points between IP World, the IP-backed meme coin platform, and different events.
Muttoni mentioned the corporate stays centered on mental property, whether or not the story entails media or industries similar to biotech, however the layoffs sign the corporate is turning into extra thinking about machine-based customers fairly than people. The change comes as firms together with Coinbase race to convey agent-friendly cryptocurrency wallets to market.
Final yr, Poseidon, an organization incubated by Story, raised $15 million in a seed funding spherical additionally led by Andreessen Horowitz. The startup will give AI builders entry to legally cleared coaching knowledge, and Muttoni mentioned Poseidon's current “traction is shaping the course of doubling down on the story.”
In January, Poseidon launched a dataset containing 33,000 hours of audio throughout 17 languages. About X, Poseidon's Chief Scientist Sandeep Chinchari mentioned Audio is turning into a limiting issue for AI as it’s turning into the first interface between people and AI.
PIP Labs Layoffs to observe This yr has seen a flurry of layoffs amongst firms within the crypto trade. Earlier this week, the staff behind Ethereum’s Layer 2 community Optimism introduced let go 20 staff. And final month, Jack Dorsey's Block, together with PIP Labs, laid off 4,000 staff, about 40% of its workforce, because it pivoted to AI.
