INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Xage (pronounced Zage), a blockchain security startup based in Silicon Valley, announced a $12 million Series A investment today led by
GE Ventures, City Light Capital and NexStar Partners also participated.The company emerged from stealth in December with a novel idea to
secure the myriad of devices in the industrial internet of things on the blockchain
Here how I described it in a December 2017 story:Xage is building a security fabric for IoT, which takes blockchain and synthesizes it with
other capabilities to create a secure environment for devices to operate
If the blockchain is at its core a trust mechanism, then it can give companies confidence that their IoT devices can&t be compromised
Xage thinks that the blockchain is the perfect solution to this problem.It an interesting approach, one that attracted Duncan Greatwood to
As he told me in December his previous successful exits —Topsy to Apple in 2013 and PostPath to Cisco in 2008 — gave him the freedom to
choose a company that really excited him for his next challenge.When he saw what Xage was doing, he wanted to be a part of it, and given the
unorthodox security approach the company has taken, and Greatwood pedigree, it couldn&t have been hard to secure today funding.The
Industrial Internet of Things is not like its consumer cousin in that it involves getting data from big industrial devices like
manufacturing machinery, oil and gas turbines and jet engines
While the entire Internet of Things could surely benefit from a company that concentrates specifically on keeping these devices secure, it a
particularly acute requirement in industry where these devices are often helping track data from key infrastructure.GE Ventures is the
investment arm of GE, but their involvement is particularly interesting because GE has made a big bet on the Industrial Internet of Things
Abhishek Shukla of GE Ventures certainly saw the connection
&For industries to benefit from the IoT revolution, organizations need to fully connect and protect their operation
Xage is enabling the adoption of these cutting edge technologies across energy, transportation, telecom, and other global industries,&
Shukla said in a statement.The company was founded just last year and is based in Palo Alto, California.
