Octopus Ventures is a venture capital firm that offers support to companies at various stages of their journey, from idea conception to IPO. They allocate over £200 million annually to invest in sectors such as health, fintech, deep tech, consumer, and B2B software, with a focus on making a positive impact. Their experienced team assists portfolio companies in scaling rapidly. Octopus Ventures' investment philosophy extends beyond monetary support, involving time, energy, and focus to work closely with founders for success. Notable companies they have backed include ManyPets, Cazoo, Depop, Elvie, and WaveOptics. Their operations span London and New York, with a network of partners in the U.S. and Asia.

Octopus Ventures

Seedcamp is Europe's seed fund, identifying and investing early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. The Seedcamp Nation includes over 400 startups building breakout businesses that change the way people live, interact and buy and includes publicly listed UiPath, Wise, and unicorns Revolut, Hopin, Sorare, Pleo, and wefox along with fast-growing businesses such as Grover, viz.ai and Ezra.  Seedcamp fast-tracks a founder's vision and creates value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support and a global network built upon more than a decade's experience backing exceptional talent. Seedcamp fast-tracks a founder's vision and creates value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support, and a global network built upon more than a decade's experience backing exceptional talent.

Seedcamp

Paladin Capital Group is a leading global investor that supports and grows the world’s most innovative companies through venture investment, expansion, and growth capital.  Paladin is a leader in investing in technologies, products, and services focused on dual use in both commercial and governmental markets with a strong value-add culture. The Paladin team merges financial expertise with national security and technical competence to add value across a wide array of market sectors and company stages. Paladin is focused on being an active investor—bringing decades of experience, advice, access, and relationships to its portfolio companies. Their most recent fund focuses on digital infrastructure resilience, investing globally in advanced technologies and solutions which enable, monitor, manage, and defend critical infrastructure that is dependent on cyber space.  The firm is headquartered in Washington, DC, with offices in New York City, Silicon Valley, London, and Luxembourg.

Paladin Capital Group

Mouro Capital is a venture capital firm backing entrepreneurs who are shaping the future of financial services. With $400 million in assets under management and supported by Banco Santander, Mouro invests across the fintech value chain in early to growth stage start-ups across Europe, North America and Latin America.

Mouro Capital

Digital Currency Group builds and supports bitcoin and blockchain companies by leveraging insights, network, and access to capital. Based in Stamford, Connecticut, DCG has been an active seed investor in the digital currency industry with 150+ investments in over 30 countries. In addition, DCG owns and operates CoinDesk, the top media and events platform in the blockchain space, Genesis Trading, the industry's leading bitcoin brokerage firm, and Grayscale Investments, the largest digital currency asset management firm.

Digital Currency Group

WndrCo is a holding company that acquires, operates, and develops businesses at the intersection of technology and media.

WndrCo

June Fund is a global technology investor. The firm was discontinued in 2022 and is no longer actively investing.

June Fund

SBI Group aims to become a corporate entity that provides a variety of one-stop financial services over the Internet now that two major events, the Financial Big Bang resulting from deregulation, and the Internet Revolution resulting from IT innovation, have radically transformed the financial industry.

SBI Group

SignalFire is a complete redesign of the modern venture firm based on six years of careful study, development, and iteration on how to fuel today's entrepreneur. Their distributed network approach gives access to some entrepreneurs, product, and engineering leaders in virtually every key discipline and industry, provided by a centralized team of investors and engineers trained at General Catalyst, Bessemer, KPCB, Google, and Yahoo. They have developed a centralized infrastructure to help with recruiting, business development, customer acquisition as well as educational and community events. They invest in leaders with an uncommon passion and perspective for leveraging data and technology solutions to upend substantial markets.

SignalFire

AlbionVC supports visionary founders with long-term capital and scale-up expertise. Founded in 1996, today we are partners to UK early-stage B2B software and healthcare companies. AlbionVC manages c. $1 billion of venture funds, currently invested in over 50 companies. AlbionVC is the technology investment arm of Albion Capital Group LLP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

AlbionVC

Wells Fargo Strategic Capital is a principal investing and merchant division of Wells Fargo & Company. Wells Fargo Strategic Capital provides structured financing to small and mid-cap companies in the United States and Canada. Product capabilities include project/development financing, mezzanine financing, and other subordinated debt financing as well as equity financing, including both preferred and common.

Wells Fargo Strategic Capital

Evolution Equity Partners is an international venture capital investor leveraging deep sector expertise to help exceptional entrepreneurs develop market-leading companies. The firm has a focus on cyber-security, enterprise software and consumer related opportunities and brings significant resources to portfolio companies seeking to expand in international markets. Evolution Equity Partners has invested in well-known companies including AVG Technologies, OpenDNS, Carbon Black, Onapsis, Security Scorecard, Cognitive Security, DF Labs, 60K Group and others. The firm purchases both primary and secondary shares investing in high growth businesses across multiple stages, primarily in North America, Europe and Israel. Visit us at www.evolutionequity.com or follow us on Twitter at @EvolutionEquity

Evolution Equity Partners

SoftBank Vision Fund is a subsidiary of Softbank Group that specializes in growth capital and social impact investments. Sectors that the fund invests in include the internet of things, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, communications infrastructure, telecoms, computational biology, biotech, cloud technologies and software, consumer internet businesses, financial technology, and mobile apps. The Fund is designed to be a catalyst for technology progress in anticipation that it will expand SoftBank's capabilities, accelerating progress towards SoftBank 2.0. It aims to invest in businesses and foundational platforms that SoftBank believes to revolutionize and innovate the world tomorrow.

SoftBank Vision Fund

Elliptic

Elliptic makes cryptocurrency transaction activity more transparent and accountable.They believe that illicit activity in cryptocurrencies must be disrupted to stop criminals from undermining the ideals on which cryptocurrencies are built. This is their focus, and they do this by solving the crucial problem of identity in cryptocurrencies, with the sole purpose of combating suspicious and criminal activity. Their team pushes the limits to dig beneath the surface, peeling back the layers to expose the truth. They aim to stop illicit cryptocurrency activity from leaving a smudge on the technology and the future it represents for all of them. The company is preventing, detecting, and pursuing criminal activity in cryptocurrencies. It identifies illicit activity in cryptocurrencies, providing actionable intelligence to cryptocurrency companies, financial institutions and government agencies.

Elliptic offers crypto asset blockchain risk monitoring solutions, crypto investigations software, solutions for wallet screening, Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) screening, and crypto entity risk management​​. Its products are used by traditional financial institutions, FinTech companies, crypto businesses, and government agencies for various business use cases, such as performing Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, managing counterparty risk, and complying with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations​​. The company claims to serve over 100 customers across 29 countries, monitoring 98% of all crypto asset trading volume​ as of June 2023.

Bringing the benefits of blockchain to the enterprise

Enterprise Blockchain Solutions

Elliptic expanding into UAE with new regional headquarters

Moody's Investors Service

To leverage off-chain and on-chain data in a single interface to enhance the accuracy of screening of virtual asset service providers (VASPs)

Providing AI-driven market intelligence and workflow automation to give firms an edge

Capital Markets Tech

Platforms that help companies meet anti-money laundering requirements and provide identity verification tools such as KYC checks.

Elliptic offers crypto asset blockchain risk monitoring solutions, crypto investigations software, solutions for wallet screening, Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) screening, and crypto entity risk management​​. Its products are used by traditional financial institutions, FinTech companies, crypto businesses, and government agencies for various business use cases, such as performing Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, managing counterparty risk, and complying with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations​​. The company claims to serve over 100 customers across 29 countries, monitoring 98% of all crypto asset trading volume​ as of June 2023.Key customers and partnershipsThe company has a network of nearly 30 partners, including leading names like AWS, IBM, and EY, along with disruptors such as Fireblocks, BitGo, CoolBitX, and Metaco. In October 2023, Elliptic <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22800">partnered with Taurus</a>, a digital asset custody and tokenization solution provider, to integrate its wallet screening tool into Taurus’ custody platform and provide banking-grade security and compliance to Taurus' clients.Funding and financialsThe company raised USD 60 million in Series C funding in October 2021, led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from SoftBank Vision Fund and existing investors. The proceeds were slated for research and development, investment in global networks, and hiring talent in the US.

BlockCypher is an enterprise company specializing in blockchain technology. The company’s cloud-based platform helps enterprises build blockchain applications with web APIs and callbacks. BlockCypher's APIs enable users to interact with multiple blockchains and retrieve data from blocks, receive notifications about unconfirmed transactions, and request multiple signature transactions​.In terms of product offerings, BlockCypher's primary service is its cloud-based platform. The platform's design is blockchain-universal, enabling its compatibility with any blockchain. This versatility permits BlockCypher to support numerous enterprise scenarios, including supply chain oversight, financial transactions, and record maintenance.Key customers and partnershipsBlockCypher and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) partnered in June 2018 to showcase secure peer-to-peer energy transactions using the blockchain, forming the foundation for a distributed energy marketplace. This collaboration opens up new value streams for customers and utilities by reducing the need for a central arbitrator.

BlockCypher

Bloq's products are designed to accelerate blockchain development and deployment, catering to individual developers, startups, and enterprises. Focusing on enterprises, the company’s solutions are offered through the Bloq platform, which includes tools for exchanges, wallets, data and analytics, and custody providers.The company provides managed blockchain cloud services that consist of three primary services: Connect, Nodes, and Stake. Connect is a blockchain API service that accelerates the development of real-time connectivity to popular blockchain networks and access to additional blockchain data services. Nodes offers private, fully managed clusters of nodes to access popular public blockchain networks. Stake provides infrastructure and API endpoints to allow users to create validators and start staking, with support for Ethereum and Avalanche networks​​.Key customers and partnershipsThe company's timeline of innovation includes major milestones such as delivering Fidelity’s first bitcoin wallet in 2016, launching BloqLabs in 2017, and working with Citibank on a Universal Node for digital assets in 2018. In recent years, Bloq has launched BloqCloud, a managed node and API service. It also partnered with Lumerin project to tokenize hashpower and founded Atmos Labs to develop metaverse-native sports​​.Bloq’s key enterprise customers include Discover, Citigroup, Foxconn, Barclays, Fidelity, and Circle.

Bloq

Dragonchain offers a blockchain-based, language-agnostic enterprise solutions that includes a Learning Management System. Some of the solutions include 1) Lyceum, which provides traceable proof-of-course progress, completion, scoring, continuing education units, and certification, along with a GDPR- and CCPA-capable identity management platform; 2) Factor, which enables secure PII storage and streamlined authentication; and 3) A FinTech suite that supports regulatory compliance. Dragonchain’s products are quantum-safe and the proof of every transaction is secured to bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchain networks.In January 2020, Dragonchain was able to execute over 260 million transactions on a business system in just 24 hours. The test was run on 520 active nodes with a utilization rate of below 2%; it was estimated that at full capacity, the platform could execute approximately 13 billion transactions.The company’s solutions can be used across a range of industries, including healthcare, FinTech, government, and supply chain management. Most use cases focus on using the platform for information gathering and management, with a priority on accurate and real-time information availability.Key customers and partnershipsThe company has worked with a range of customers including Snohomish County in the US, Beaxy, Knowledge Perk, and SafePass.

Dragonchain

BlockApps is a leading provider of blockchain solutions that helps businesses enhance transparency and trust in their transactions. BlockApps' key product, STRATO, is a BaaS platform compatible with Ethereum, which is designed for business network transactions and activities, adhering to the standards of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). It can be deployed on multiple cloud providers, integrated with various systems, and is configurable for a range of business activities. It is primarily used for building business networks with a focus on enhancing security, performance, trust, and transparency. STRATO's capabilities include tokenizing real-world assets, incorporating transparency data, and creating value chain incentives. It offers a suite of features including data privacy controls, network governance, scalability, APIs for third-party integration, audit and reporting tools, data migration facilities, identity management using existing enterprise sign-on systems, consensus mechanisms, developer tools, application portability, and the ability to use existing enterprise data models.Key customers and partnershipsIn 2016, BlockApps collaborated with ConsenSys and BHP Billiton to deploy its first production application. In the same year, it built enterprise Proof of Concepts (POCs) with John Hancock and Upgraded (now Ticketmaster).BlockApps announced an initiative with ARC, United Airlines, and Blockskye in 2018 and also launched the STRATO platform on all major cloud providers by partnering with Google and Amazon Web Services.In September 2021, it launched TraceCarbon, a CO2 ecosystem management application, supporting sustainability traceability.Funding and financialsIn April 2022, BlockApps raised USD 41 million in funding through a round led by Liberty City Ventures. The company intended to use the funding to enhance its go-to-market strategy, expand its team, help businesses expand in its blockchain ecosystem, and bring more real assets to the STRATO platform.

BlockApps

Cryptowerk is an enterprise blockchain company that offers blockchain-as-a-service, allowing organizations to create a tamper-proof chain of custody for their digital assets and enabling them to prove authenticity at scale​​. Cryptowerk's solutions are used in multiple industries, including aerospace and defense, automotive, pharmaceuticals, software, and utilities​​.The company's primary product is Cryptowerk HORIZON. This software creates tamper-proof records of digital assets that can be sealed in public or private blockchains up to one million times per second. These digital "fingerprints" can then be compared to the original data to verify authenticity. Cryptowerk HORIZON is offered as a REST API. The product is available for cloud-based deployment and supports various organizations including midsize businesses, small businesses, enterprises, freelancers, nonprofits, and government entities​​.

Cryptowerk

Companies that offer blockchain-based solutions that enable users and companies to track price, date, location, quality, and other relevant information for supply chain management

Companies and protocols that leverage blockchain technology to act as content delivery networks (CDNs) or provide content sharing solutions

Companies that leverage blockchain technology to offer databases, query services and data sharing

Companies that offer blockchain-enabled Internet-of-Things (IoT) development platforms for building networks and transferring IoT device data

Companies that leverage blockchain to protect and manage digital intellectual property (IP) rights

Companies that leverage blockchain technology to provide cybersecurity and identity management solutions for enterprises

Companies and protocols that offer industry and context specific blockchain-based solutions for enterprise applications

The blockchain-as-a-service segment operates under a B2B SaaS model

Companies offering blockchain-enabled tools to build IoT networks/supply chain traceability solutions for smart factories

Includes companies that offer blockchain-enabled tools to build IoT networks and transfer IoT device data

All companies within this industry are either blockchain-based platforms or offer blockchain-centric services

DISRUPTOR_PRESENT

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

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 <ul>
 <li>Elliptic, a blockchain-based security solutions provider, has partnered with Taurus, a digital asset custody and tokenization solution provider, to integrate its wallet screening tool into Taurus' custody platform.</li>
 <li>The integration will enable Taurus to manage anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud risks in compliance with regulations. The partnership aims to provide banking-grade security and compliance to Taurus' clients, such as Deutsche Bank, Capital Union, and SEBA.</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>

Elliptic

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