dLab, a blockchain accelerator program launched last October, from Cardano blockchain R&D firm EMURGO, and SOSV, a tech accelerator, has announced their first investments. In addition to the four companies which will be participating in the first dLab cohort, the program also announced supporting several Cardano fellowship projects, which will be revealed over the next few weeks.
The development process will see both SOSV and EMURGO spending the next 14 weeks working hand in hand with the selected founders to accelerate their companies’ technology, business models, and positioning. In addition to investment, the program will be providing them with staff support, network access, and opportunities to work closely with a large, diverse mentorship pool.
“It’s been an extremely competitive selection process, as we’ve received far more applications than expected for an inaugural program, and it’s truly been a pleasure to speak with so many passionate founders who are working day and night to decentralize the world’s data, empower individuals, tokenize financial instruments, and explore new use cases for blockchain technology. After hours of interviews and internal discussions, these four companies proved to us that they have what it takes to become great.”
The Selected Companies
Catallact – is a blockchain analytics engine for the finance industry, focusing on market intelligence and regulatory compliance. Built upon extensive academic research by founders that have significant trading experience, Catallact applies machine learning and data science techniques to provide automated and scalable insights into the dynamics of crypto-assets.
Team: Paul Lewis and Dan McGinn
Helixworks’ – a proprietary MoSS technology integrates DNA-based ID tags to physical goods. When combined with digital ledger technologies, DNA-IDs provide an effective mechanism to track food, medicine, and other supply chain goods that is secure, robust (surviving washing, extensive damage, etc), and extremely difficult to falsify.
Team: Nimesh Pinnamaneni and Sachin Chalapati
Sempo – helps aid organizations distribute relief funds directly to people in crises so that they can immediately buy what they need. They solve beneficiary enrollment, cash disbursement and program monitoring in one seamless platform.
Team: Nick Williams and Tristan Cole
Tesseract – is standardizing and streamlining the way applications interact with blockchains to make it as convenient as interacting with the Internet. Their multi-network OpenWallet protocol, mobile-first wallet reference implementation, and supporting SDKs for mobile application development are their first step towards building the railway for decentralized internet.
Team: Daniel Leping, Gilad Waksman, and Yehor Popovych
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