1kx, Blockchain Capital lead $7.5M Series A for KOR Protocol

KOR Protocol raised $7.5 million in a Series A round led by 1kx and Blockchain Capital at a $100 million post-money valuation. KOR plans to use the funding to continue developing its onchain creative asset infrastructure, support partner integrations and grow its ecosystem, and to prepare a native token offering.

KOR operates an onchain creative asset clearinghouse built on Coinbase's Layer 2. Creators can register music, film and other works onchain to establish provenance and ownership. The platform uses AI-powered discovery and matching tools to route assets to labels, agencies, brands, curators and platforms that might license or distribute them.

Payments on the platform use stablecoins such as USDC. Programmable splits enable revenue to be allocated automatically to contributors and rights holders when a work is licensed, remixed or used in campaigns.

KOR reports more than $2 million in gross revenue to date. It reports over 1,000 partners, more than 1 million lifetime sign-ups and roughly 400,000 connected wallets. Named partners include Beatport, mau5trap, Imogen Heap, Banijay Group and KDDI.

Ritty Quin, CEO and electronic music producer, described the company's aim: “KOR is building the system that connects those pieces by helping talent get recognized earlier, reach the right opportunities, and build lasting careers.”

KOR emphasized that it is not creating a new blockchain. The protocol is designed to be composable with existing intellectual property and payment infrastructure, including asset standards, attestation systems, agent identity frameworks, HTTP-native payments, cross-chain intents and stablecoin settlement.

Existing backers that participated in the round include Republic Crypto, Sfermion, Alumni Ventures and SevenX. KOR plans to direct the new capital to product development, partner onboarding and broader ecosystem work as it rolls out additional features and its planned token.

Some projects in the creative IP space have shifted focus to providing verified training data for artificial intelligence models. One earlier project restructured to concentrate on AI training data rather than general intellectual property infrastructure.