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Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV) is the latest company to back VAKT, a blockchain-based post-trade platform.
According to a press release, SAEV has invested $5 million in new shares of the blockchain firm and joined VAKT’s 12 investors which include Chevron, ING, Shell, Total, KOCH Industries Inc, Mercuria and Reliance to name a few. The investment will help VAKT develop its platform further and expand it into new markets especially in Asia.
“It is a proud moment to be able to count SAEV as one of our shareholders. This company – part of the most profitable business in the world – has a strong track record of investing in industry innovation. We were not proactively seeking further investors; however, we could not miss the chance to bring on-board a partner of this calibre, which is a tremendous show of faith in VAKT’s vision,” said VAKT CFO Richard James.
Vakt also welcomed Aramco Trading Company as a new user of the Vakt platform, which is currently live in the North Sea BFOET crude oil market.
Etienne Amic, VAKT CEO, said that within a few months of the platform going live in the North Sea, they have learned a lot from having the platform in production and iterating the product to make it better suited for global waterborne oil.
"We are now on a path to becoming the backbone of the post-trade processing of physical commodities. We couldn’t ask for a better partner ahead of our future expansion than Saudi Aramco – especially when it comes to the company’s reach and expertise in Asia,” Amic added.
The VAKT platform manages physical energy transactions from trade entry to final settlement while making the whole process faster and easier by eliminating reconciliation and paper-based processes.
Hans Middelthon, MD of SAEV Europe, said that they were impressed with how VAKT demonstrated its platform to be “truly transformative” to end-users.
"Leveraging blockchain theory and applying it to the complicated world of post-trade processing, VAKT has made a compelling pitch to become an integral part of market infrastructure. SAEV’s mission is to develop and deploy technologies into Aramco’s operations. VAKT is an excellent candidate in this sense and we look forward to helping the company with its development," he added.
Meanwhile, in November, Saudi British Bank (SABB) and HSBC announced that they used blockchain technology for financing an international trade transaction between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
