Blockchain Startup Gem Kickstarts 2016 with a $7.1m Series A Round

Richard Kastelein

January 10, 2016

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Blockchain API provider Gem kickstarted 2016 with a $7.1m Series A announced this week.

Gem, a leading blockchain platform provider, announced the funding was led by Pelion Venture Partners and participated in by KEC Ventures, Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group, RRE Ventures and more.

“We believe blockchain technology will transform how people and companies interact,” says Micah Winkelspecht, CEO and founder of Gem. “It will underpin entire industries and one day produce a blockchain economy that will form the underlying architecture of our daily lives.”

According to a recent report by technology-focused boutique investment bank Magister Advisors, the blockchain and bitcoin ecosystem received nearly $1 billion in funding since 2013, and that number is expected to increase by another $1 billion in 2017. Gem is the first blockchain company in 2016 to announce a formal round of funding. Gem’s investors are attracted to its fully customizable platform that refines blockchain technology into a data management application that can be applied cross-industry.

Ben Dahl, a partner at Pelion Venture Partners who led the funding round and has also joined Gem’s Board of Directors said:

“We have been monitoring the blockchain industry looking for a company that could bridge the divide between enabling developers and their projects, while also advancing blockchain use cases in larger enterprises. After spending time with Gem team and their customers, we became convinced they have the foresight, traction and leadership necessary to connect the enterprise with the efficiencies and benefits of blockchains.”

“It was obvious to us immediately the Pelion team shared our vision for the future of blockchains and what would be required to get there,” said Gem Founder and CEO, Micah Winkelspecht. “We’re excited to have Ben and Pelion join the team and help us do something special.”

Gem was founded by Blockchain thought leader, open-source contributor, and community organizer Micah Winkelspecht and launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF’s Startup Battlefield in 2014. After launching a multisignature API for developers, the company is now working to promote the integration of blockchain technology in finance, healthcare, and other data-reliant industries.

Jeff Parkinson, partner of KEC Ventures said:

“I’m really excited about blockchain ledger systems, and Gem is a great example of a company that’s fully leveraging the potential of that technology to transform the services industry.”

Scott Kriz, CEO of Bitium has also been appointed to Gem’s Board of Directors. Gem has raised $10.4 million in total funding and is based in Venice, CA.

For more information, please visit: https://gem.co

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About Richard Kastelein

Founder and publisher of industry publication Blockchain News (EST 2015), a partner at ICO services collective Token.Agency ($750m+ and 90+ ICOs and STOs), director of education company Blockchain Partners (Oracle Partner) – Vancouver native Richard Kastelein is an award-winning publisher, innovation executive and entrepreneur. He sits on the advisory boards of some two dozen Blockchain startups and has written over 1500 articles on Blockchain technology and startups at Blockchain News and has also published pioneering articles on ICOs in Harvard Business Review and Venturebeat. Irish Tech News put him in the top 10 Token Architects in Europe.

Kastelein has an Ad Honorem - Honorary Ph.D. and is Chair Professor of Blockchain at China's first Blockchain University in Nanchang at the Jiangxi Ahead Institute of Software and Technology. In 2018 he was invited to and attended University of Oxford's Saïd Business School for Business Automation 4.0 programme. Over a half a decade experience judging and rewarding some 1000+ innovation projects as an EU expert for the European Commission's SME Instrument programme as a startup assessor and as a startup judge for the UK government's Innovate UK division.

Kastelein has spoken (keynotes & panels) on Blockchain technology in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona, Beijing, Brussels, Bucharest, Dubai, Eindhoven, Gdansk, Groningen, the Hague, Helsinki, London (5x), Manchester, Minsk, Nairobi, Nanchang, Prague, San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Clara (2x), Shanghai, Singapore (3x), Tel Aviv, Utrecht, Venice, Visakhapatnam, Zwolle and Zurich.

He is a Canadian (Dutch/Irish/English/Métis) whose writing career has ranged from the Canadian Native Press (Arctic) to the Caribbean & Europe. He's written occasionally for Harvard Business Review, Wired, Venturebeat, The Guardian and Virgin.com, and his work and ideas have been translated into Dutch, Greek, Polish, German and French. A journalist by trade, an entrepreneur and adventurer at heart, Kastelein's professional career has ranged from political publishing to TV technology, boatbuilding to judging startups, skippering yachts to marketing and more as he's travelled for nearly 30 years as a Canadian expatriate living around the world. In his 20s, he sailed around the world on small yachts and wrote a series of travel articles called, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Seas' travelling by hitching rides on yachts (1989) in major travel and yachting publications. He currently lives in Groningen, Netherlands where he's raising three teenage daughters with his wife and sailing partner, Wieke Beenen.

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