San-Francisco-based company Narrative announced on Wednesday that it acquired $80 million in funding for a blockchain developed to thwart artificial intelligence entities like OpenAI from appropriating creators’ intellectual assets without authorization.

Sources with knowledge of the matter noted that the investment round values the emerging company at $2.25 billion. These sources, who requested anonymity as the information has not been divulged publicly, disclosed the involvement of Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, as the lead investor in the Series B funding round for the two-year-old firm.

Backing from crypto-focused venture capital firm Polychain and Brevan Howard, the investment vehicle of British billionaire hedge fund supervisor Alan Howard, was also secured.

A blockchain serves as a decentralized database that upholds an unchangeable log of activities. It serves as the foundational technology for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether.

Narrative functions as a blockchain network enabling creators to validate ownership of their intellectual property by storing their IP on the platform.

The company’s technology is structured to safeguard the IP of individuals and entities by integrating associated terms such as licensing fees and royalty-sharing agreements into smart contracts.

Smart contracts are digital agreements preserved on a blockchain that automatically execute when specific conditions are met.

The platform makes creators’ intellectual assets “programmable,” as explained by SY Lee, Narrative’s co-founder and CEO. It establishes guidelines for the utilization of content and the compensation expected for reproducing or altering the work.

Lee emphasized the advantage of this approach, noting that it eliminates intermediaries typically involved in disputes over copyright infringement in the media sector.

Describing the transformation of IP into a modular system, Lee emphasized the simplicity in embedding licensing and royalty-sharing terms into concise contracts, bypassing the need for extensive legal negotiations.

Narrative generates revenue by imposing a network fee for any activity conducted on its network.

Narrative is now addressing a pressing challenge with its technology – the unlawful utilization of copyrighted material on the web facilitated by powerful generative AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

These models, which empower numerous AI chatbots increasingly utilized as a search alternative, necessitate substantial training data to enable advanced and informative responses to user queries.

However, the data fueling these AI models often originates from sources with copyright restrictions.

Microsoft was not immediately available for comment when reached out to regarding Lee’s statements.

Quality IP is essential to train such AI models, Lee highlighted, stressing that AI companies risk long-term setbacks if they fail to adequately compensate the content creators and publishers providing the vast amounts of IP data.

Narrative, established in 2022, plans to leverage the fresh capital to expand its IP network infrastructure and integrate more developer partners. The platform currently accommodates over 200 developers utilizing programmable IP for content creation.

Lee concluded by underscoring the importance of compensating and monetizing IP within the evolving digital landscape to ensure sustained growth and viability for AI in the future.