In a round led by Pelion Venture Partners, blockchain technology specialist and FinDEVr alum Gem raised $7.1 million in funding. Also participating in the Series A were:
- Amplify.LA
- Blockchain Capital
- Danmar Capital
- Digital Currency Group
- Drummond Road Capital
- KEC Ventures
- RRE Ventures
- Tamarisk Global
- Tekton Ventures
Angel investor James Joaquin also participated in the financing, which takes Gem’s total capital to $12 million, according to Crunchbase. Ben Dahl of Pelion Venture Partners and Bitium CEO Scott Kriz will join Gem’s board of directors.
Gem CEO and founder Micah Winkelspecht spoke on “Redefining Banking from the Ground Up” at FinDEVr 2015 in San Francisco.
In a statement at the Gem blog, the company highlighted its vision for distributed ledger technology as part of a “‘blockchain economy’ that forms the underlying architecture of our daily lives: from capital markets to patient care, supply chains to logistics, property rights to digital rights management.”
Gem makes it easier for companies to use blockchain technology by turning complex processes into modular, bitcoin APIs and then leveraging its platform to scale and automatically deploy. Gem recently developed a multi-signature bitcoin API for developers, and is currently building a “modular platform for blockchain applications” that has broad-use cases for many different industries.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Venice, California, Gem debuted at FinDEVr 2015.