Blockchain Startup Spring Labs Raises $14.75M USD In Seed Funding
Blockchain startup Spring Labs has raised $14.75 million USD in a seed funding round led by August Capital. Other investors included GreatPoint Ventures, Jump Capital, private equity firm Victory Park Capital, and crypto asset manager Multicoin Capital.
Founded in 2017 by members of the founding team and board of lending platform Avant, Spring Labs is the core maintainer of the decentralized Spring Network, a blockchain network that will be created to enable financial institutions and data providers to share data and underlying beliefs about credit and identity information.
The funding will be used to build the Spring Network in the coming months, to grow a top-tier engineering team, and to deliver on its vision to decentralize credit and identity services.
The company said the Spring Network will be built on a second generation blockchain. It will incorporate both public and permissioned nodes to facilitate compliance with regulatory requirements and enforce information security through the use of privacy-preserving smart contracts.
Spring Labs will be collaborating with Avant to test the company’s existing workflow between its personal loan platform and banking partners over the envisioned blockchain system. The company wants to create a more secure data platform that exists on a distributed ledger, preventing the single-point-of-failure architecture present in the Equifax hack, which may have affected nearly 150 million Americans.
Adam Jiwan, CEO of Spring Labs, said in building a number of notable FinTech companies like Avant and Future Finance, they’ve seen the issues within the credit and identity ecosystem firsthand. He said the 2017 Equifax hack is a public representation of underlying issues with how data is exchanged and secured among parties in the ecosystem.
“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,” Jiwan said. “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.”
Eric Carlborg, Partner at August Capital, said they see a huge opportunity here to improve the infrastructure of the global credit ecosystem in a more decentralized and secure way, with the right incentives in place to drive participation and information sharing.
“This is a team we’ve known for years and backed in the past,” said Carlborg. “They are the right group to not only develop this promising technology but also get it into the hands of the financial system in a regulatory compliant way.”
