Engie and Maltem announce new venture to make blockchain more accessible

French energy firm Engie and business consulting group Maltem have come together for a new initiative that aims to democratise the uses of blockchain technology and expand its reach.

Engie and Maltem have created “Blockchain Studio,” which has already secured an initial €1.9 million in seed funding.

According to the official release dated September 7, Blockchain Studio has published a software suite that accelerates and industrialises the implementation of Blockchain projects. This includes an initial tool which facilitates the development of “smart contracts” making it accessible to users with no technical knowledge and a second tool to manage the establishment of blockchain infrastructure accessible in the cloud or directly on the company's server.

“The collaboration between ENGIE and Maltem is a significant advantage for creating Blockchain Studio. Their network has already allowed us to receive considerable interest from large groups from a range of sectors,” Corentin Denoeud, Blockchain Studio CEO explained.

“This substantial investment will allow us to attract the best skills and to speed up development of the product, and thereby provide an appropriate and long-lasting solution to our customers’ needs for developing their Blockchain applications,” Vincent Le Gallic, Blockchain Studio CTO added.

With a current headcount of 10 employees, Blockchain Studio expects the number to increase to 25 by year-end 2019. It also plans to position itself on the Asian market, starting next year, with the opening of an office in Singapore, as well as Southern Europe by end of S1 2019.

Last year, Engie collaborated with other energy firms to support Energy Web Foundation (EWF) that aims to foster the commercial deployment of blockchain technology in the energy sector. More recently, Engie’s corporate research center, ENGIE Lab CRIGEN, through its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAI Lab), signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the IOTA Foundation to cooperate in experimentation with the IOTA Tangle in the energy and related IoT domains.