The company said it secured $220 million through a private placement, comprising $100 million in cash and $120 million in Story tokens.
Of the total proceeds, $82 million will be used to purchase additional IP tokens from the Story Foundation. Meanwhile, the Foundation plans to deploy the entire cash portion to repurchase IP tokens on the open market within 90 days of the transaction.
However, the announcement coincided with sharp market declines in Heritage’s stock and IP’s value.
According to him:
“We’re not doing this just because everyone else is. Our reason is clear: our story needs to be told beyond crypto. There’s no better way to do that than by building a presence in the world’s largest capital market, the US stock market.”
Lee described Story as a blockchain network operating at the intersection of crypto, artificial intelligence, and intellectual property. Rather than competing on yield or transaction speed, the company focuses on unlocking what it views as an $80 trillion asset class spanning AI datasets, entertainment franchises, and biomedical patents.
Story aims to enable attribution, traceability, and fair compensation for creators by making IP programmable. Lee emphasized that the next competitive battleground in AI will be data ownership and monetization, not just computational power.
Lee pointed out that the network has already secured significant adoption as its Layer 1 blockchain already has hundreds of thousands of IPs, including works from artists like Justin Bieber, Blackpink, and BTS, as well as global brands such as Crocs and Adidas.
