Spring Labs has raised a $14.75m Seed funding round led by August Capital.
Participation to the round came from Victory Park Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Multicoin Capital, Wavemaker Genesis, and Jump Capital.
Spring Labs operates the blockchain-based network Spring Network which is designed to help lenders, banks, and data providers exchange data between one another. The company hopes to ‘revolutionise’ the credit and identity sharing processes via a decentralised network, with the hope of making a more secure and transparent model.
Founded in 2017, the company uses blockchain technology to help firms share credit and identity data, while ensuring compliance and regulation requirements are met. The platform supports information security through the use of smart contracts.
The investment comes just weeks before the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It is designed to harmonise data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU citizens data privacy and to reshape the way organisations across the region approach data privacy. It also effects companies operating outside of the EU, but that access EU citizens.
One of its products, Black Hole, is a call recording system for mobile phones or GSM, mainly for government security and defense agencies. Black Hole is based on a centralized monitoring and listening system, high audio quality (noise immunity), fast and easy file filtering, scalable from 30 to 128 channels of remote controlled access and easy configuration, ID calls, and time and date of Events.
Earlier this year, MiFID II came into force, Under the regaultion there is an explicit requirement for firms to maintain a policy around recording telephone conversations and other forms of electronic communications – for example, video conferencing and web chat applications.
Capital from the round will be used to build the platform over coming months, as well as to grow its engineering team.
Spring Labs CEO Adam Jiwan said, “Leveraging blockchain technology and our deep knowledge of financial services, we are engineering a fundamentally new way to approach the industry that benefits both consumers and financial institutions with greater data transparency, efficiency and security. This round, one of the largest initial venture rounds raised by a blockchain company to-date, features investments from notable organizations in fintech and blockchain, and is a testament to our experience and responsible approach.”
To support early growth on its network the company is partnering with digital lending platform Avant. The company is also in talks with banks regarding the adoption of Spring Netowrk to use alongside the Avant platform.
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