Blockchain Payments Firm Amino Raises $4.5M USD Seed Round

Announcements, Blockchain, Investing | February 22, 2018 By:

Payments company Amino has raised a new $4.5 million seed round led by First Round Capital. As part of the investment, Amino added First Round founder Josh Kopelman as the third member of its board.

Amino, formerly known as Curren-C, combines technologies from blockchain, payments, and advertising to bring transparency to online advertising. Amino’s tech allows ad buyers to create a digital signature authorizing their money to be spent. As ad buys occur, Amino’s tech automatically generates a digital ledger of the transaction that cannot be altered by either buyer or seller. It then tracks each time an ad runs, all the companies involved in the supply chain and how much money each company is making along the way – and ties that back to the financial record which it uses to automate payments to all parties.

Amino co-founder Will Luttrell, who started the company alongside Monetate’s David Bookspan and Chris Chapman, the company’s SVP of Engineering, said the company will use the money to add staff in Philadelphia.

“What this means is expansion right here in Philadelphia at our office at 16th and Market,” said Luttrell, an adtech insider who formerly founded a company called Integral Ad Science. “We’re looking to double the size of the company over the next 12 months.”

Luttrell added that the funding will also allow Amino to grow and operate at least through 2018. In the meantime, the company will focus on customer acquisition and generation of revenue.

“David and I knew that we were coming off some major value inflection milestones,” Luttrell said. “We’re placing a bet to raise a smaller round now before we take any further dilution. We’re betting that certain key events that are going to raise our valuation are going to happen and some already have. It looks like the bet is a good one.”