Overview

• Jason Zhao is stepping away from his full-time role to incubate Poseidon, an AI initiative targeting frontier industries, and will retain a strategic adviser position at Story Protocol.
• Poseidon aims to apply artificial intelligence to science, biopharma, robotics and space, reflecting Zhao’s renewed focus on frontier research from his DeepMind roots.
• Co-founder SY Lee takes over as CEO of Story Protocol with Andrea as chief product officer and Sandeep as chief AI officer.
• Story Protocol’s IP token showed mixed market reactions after the announcement, with some outlets reporting a 2% uptick to above $5.80 and others noting declines with thin trading volumes.
• Traders and community members have criticized the exit, pointing to the whitepaper’s 20% co-founder allocation and calculations that Zhao could realize about $281 million, raising governance and trust concerns.