One year after being reported in "Globes," blockchain startup Qedit has announced that it has raised $10 million in a Series A round led by MizMaa Ventures and with participation from Ant Financial, RGAX, Meron Capital, Collider Ventures, Jovono and Target Global.
Qedit , founded in 2015 by CEO Jonathan Rouach, Ruben Arnold, and Prof. Aviv Zohar, was among the first Israeli blockchain companies, and is one of the few that develops tools for the enterprise market that are not cryptographic currencies. The company develops tools for maintaining the confidentiality of information in organizations that want to cooperate with each other without exposing sensitive data. This is accomplished through the use of zero-knowledge proof cryptography.
The new round is in addition to the $3 million raised in Qedit's seed round led by Prof. Ehud Weinstein and Dr. Ofir Shalvi, two of the founders of Anobit Technologies (which was sold to Apple); Eddy Shalev; Yariv Gilat; Bitmain founder Jihan Wu; and Collider. Rouach said that the new financing round was designed to "increase the company's staff from 20 to 25-30 employees in development, sales, and business development in order to help the company gain access to markets and tenders throughout the world."
Simultaneously with the announcement of the financing round, Qedit announced three new strategic partnerships: with virtualization company VMware, which deals with cloud infrastructure; with Ant Financial, which offers financial services through payment provider Alipay; and with RGAX, a subsidiary of Reinsurance Group of America (RGA).
"Qedit will provide VMware's privacy layer for blockchain as a default option in all of its installments. The first pilots are taking place now, and the announcement of this is scheduled for the VMworld 2019 conference in several months. This is not proof of feasibility; it is preparatory work for actual deployment," Rouach said.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 7, 2019
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2019