Austin—Factom, an Austin, TX-based company that uses blockchain technology to secure and verify data such as public records and business documents, nearly doubled its Series A funding round to more than $8 million.
Factom, founded in 2015, announced it had raised a $4.2 million Series A funding in October, led by Tim Draper, the noted venture capitalist who runs investment firm Draper Associates. That amount has increased to $8.03 million now, Factom says, including $2.7 million from a group of new investors that includes Peeli Ventures, Harvest Equity, and a group of local Austin investors.
Factom says interest in its recently launched mortgage product, Factom Harmony, attracted interest from additional investors. Factom was using the initial funding to further develop its product line and software, which is based in recording and publishing data using blockchains. Like financial transactions made using Bitcoin, Factom encrypts its clients’ data and publishes the encrypted information in public ledgers, with only the publisher and client owning the key to the code.
Factom has other product lines known as Apollo, Iris, and Hera, which are focused on auditing, identifying a person’s identity with Internet-connected devices, and working with businesses and governments. In addition to funds associated with Draper Associates, other investors in the original Series A round were Propertyinfo Corporation, Star Vista Capital, CashBUS, BnkToTheFuture, Fenbushi Corporation, Fenbushi Investment Fund, China Canada Angels, Plug and Play, Tospring Technology Limited, and angel investors Kevin Spiers, Darla Spiers, Hillary Ryan, Leon Fu, Roland Hicks, and the Marc Shubert Living Trust.
