Hedera Hashgraph, a distributed ledger technology startup whose website reads “Hello future” recently raised $100 million in a funding round. This new round of fundraising was conducted to develop further Hedera’s distributed ledger network and platform. As per the announcement, high net individuals and institutional investors participated in it.
The organization has plans to launch its public service after a few years of development and would be providing early access to some of its partners by next month. Mance Harmon, co-founder and CEO of Hedora said that there has been tremendous demand for their “fast, fair, and secure public network.”
“With this funding, we will be able to accelerate development of key services to be provided by Hedera– including a cryptocurrency, file storage service, and smart contract platform – to help make it not only what we believe is the fastest and most secure public ledger available, but also the most feature-rich for developers looking to build highly decentralized apps,” Harmon further added.
The initiative that challenges blockchain and believes that its less technologically constrained than existing blockchain services plans to raise another $20 million through an initial coin offering (ICO). Harmon also mentioned that this ICO would only be open to accredited investors.
In the current round of $100 million, while Hedera employees contributed around 10% of the total, Harmon noted that he did not recognize most of the other investors. One of the investors that Hedera knew was Ari Paul, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of BlockTower Capital.
“Hedera hashgraph is one of the most exciting projects in cryptocurrency from an engineering perspective. In addition, the experienced team and the advances they have made to date in developing a functioning network make them a standout in the distributed ledger market,” Paul said.
During an interview, Harmon also mentioned that the organization plans to double its number of employees to around a hundred in the coming year. What makes Hedera’s technology “the next-generation equivalent of Blockchain,” is the “the difference in terms of performance and security between a calculator and a computer,” said Harmon.
