Today blockchain startup SIMBA Chain announced it closed a $25 million Series A led by Valley Capital Partners. Other participants include Notre Dame Pit Road Fund, Elevate Ventures, Stanford Law School Venture Fund, and numerous individuals.
The startup spun out of the University of Notre Dame and landed numerous government contracts early on. But its primary offering is what it calls Smart contracts as a Service. It’s a blockchain middleware platform that hides the complexity of managing blockchains from developers so they can focus on creating applications.
In the early days, Simba Chain supported Ethereum and enterprise blockchains Quorum and Hyperledger Fabric. But since then, it has expanded to support numerous public blockchains, including RSK, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, and Stellar, with more in the pipeline.
Government contracts landed by the startup include with the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, including a $9.5 million contract with the navy in early 2020. Boeing also uses its technology.
“SIMBA Chain solves a very big problem; most companies don’t know how to adopt or manage blockchain technology,” said Joseph Grundfest, former commissioner of the SEC and member of Stanford’s Center for Blockchain Research. “SIMBA Chain makes that easy and cheap, so it’s a bit like Stripe for the blockchain. Also, by writing on energy-efficient blockchains, SIMBA Chain’s ‘green solution’ responds to concern that some blockchains contribute to global warming.”
More recently, the company has turned its attention to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). While much of the NFT attention has focused on art and collectible applications, there are numerous enterprise applications for NFTs, including for anti-counterfeit solutions and digital assets such as tokenized real estate. The company has developed an NFT marketplace for an un-named university.
Over the last 18 months, the company says it’s grown revenue by 360% and now has more than 6,000 users.
