WINSTON SALEM – Fluree, a data management platform founded by veteran entrepreneur Flip Filipowski and partner Brian Platz, has closed on a $6.5 million seed round.
The funding will be used to “accelerate product development,” the Winston Salem-based company said, building applications utilizing the World Wide Web Consortium (WRC) verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers (DID).
4490 Ventures led the round, with additional funds from Rise of the Rest, Good Growth Capital, Engage Ventures and former Venrock Managing Partner Ray Rothrock.
Flruee’s blockchain technology
“We couldn’t ask for a better group of investors to bolster our platform during a time of rapid blockchain innovation,” said Platz, in a statement. “As data-centric security, verifiable credentials and secure data sharing become the cornerstones of Web 3.0, Fluree and our trusted investors are becoming key players in the internet of tomorrow.”
It comes at a pivotal time for the company, which has added big-name customers such as the United States Air Force and Wake Forest Health.
Founded in 2016, Fluree is a data management platform that uses blockchain technology to power enterprise-grade applications.
For those not in the know, blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data.
In this case, Fluree combines transactions into immutable time-stamped “blocks” and locks each block in via advanced asymmetric cryptograph, making data completely tamper-proof. Traceability of changes are tied to digital signatures for complete proof and visibility into data lifecycle.
The result: companies doing business with one another that otherwise may not trust each other, can operate on a platform that guarantees full trustworthiness, due to instant visibility and transparency.
Startup profile: Fluree, a Filipowski-led startup, targets ‘low-code’ cloud app development
Platz said leading organizations in sectors — including education, supply chain and healthcare — are employing the platform to build secure blockchain applications that fix some of the Internet’s biggest problems.
Fluree is available on all leading cloud providers, including Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.
“The biggest organizations in the world are universally experiencing major challenges with storing, securing, and sharing the massive amounts of data generated every day in the enterprise,” said Thiago Olsen, managing director at Engage.
“The need to break down data silos and become a data-centric organization is becoming increasingly urgent, and we believe that Fluree’s approach to make data self-securing and portable provides a powerful platform to facilitate this transformation. We are pleased to expand on our partnership and support the growth of the Fluree team.”
