Fluree receives $4.7M in seed funding for blockchain tech

Blockchain app developer Fluree has raised $4.7 million in its first seed funding round led by 4490 Ventures with participation from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, according to a press release posted by The PE Hub Network on Monday.

Co-founded by its CEO Brian Platz and Flip Filipowski, Fluree is a data management system that uses blockchain and graph database technologies to offer an innovative means of storing and querying data. Its technology includes two components: FlureeDL, an immutable distributed ledger that ensures all blockchain cryptography updates are in chronological order, and FlureeDB, an optimized graph database used to create applications on top of FlureeDL.

“The real benefits [Fluree] provides is immense integrity around the data, so you can prove it has never been tampered with, who put it in there, etc., something you can’t do with current databases or other data management technologies,” Platz said, as quoted by TechCrunch.

Although the North California-headquartered startup has diverse customers, it said that it can be leveraged as a better enterprise database. In its press release, it said that it can particularly benefit emerging architectures and services including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, microservices, consortium blockchain networks, and the semantic web.

“Decentralized data ownership like this has never before been possible, and we are excited to witness an entire new class of applications that emerge from no longer having to blindly trust other parties with critical data,” Filipowski, said.

The recent seed funding capital will boost Fluree’s adoption of its existing products via market awareness. It also plans to utilize the fund to enhance its R&D ahead of its 2019 open source release.

“Fluree has in place the mission, technology, and road map necessary to serve a wide variety of industries as they transform through the next evolution of data management to a much more interconnected world,” Dan Malven, 4490 Ventures Managing Director, said.

Blockchain-based trade finance startup Crowdz has also recently received $5.5 million in a Series A investment round to revolutionize the $9 trillion receivables market globally. The round was led by British investment bank Barclays and venture capital firm BOLD Capital Partners.