UK Startup Gospel Technologies is Salesforce’s First Blockchain Investment – CBRonline

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Big hitters back enterprise blockchain challenger

UK startup Gospel Technology, which uses blockchain to create a perimeter-less security infrastructure for inter-company data sharing, has won £5 million in Series A funding from Salesforce Ventures – the VC arm of the leading CRM software company.

The funding round represents Salesforce Ventures’ first blockchain investment.

Gospel Technology was also backed in the round by IA Ventures, an early stage venture caputal firm based in New York City.

Gospel Technology, was founded by CEO Ian Smith, the entrepreneur behind data analysis and migration company, Butterfly Software, which was acquired by IBM in 2012. (He previously worked as a storage architect for Hitachi Data Systems, Deutsche Bank and a “storage transformation consultant” at Dell).

It uses a private permissioned blockchain – using the practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) consensus mechanism – to build a flexible mechanism for sharing data between companies and their supply chains.

The company notes in a recent blog: “Even using a private blockchain – in many systems the control parameters are binary – you are either allowed to see all the data or you are not. Much like using secure sharing tools – all the data is exposed instead of only that which is authorised and required for the particular request. With Gospel, everyone maintains control of their own data, whilst allowing granular access only to relevant information for other parties in the value chain.”