PeerNova Validates Shift to Enterprise Blockchain With $31 Million Funding

Blockchain startup PeerNova has received $31 million in a Series B round, bringing the company’s total fundraising to $74 million.

Mosaik Partners led the latest investment, joined by Intuitive Venture Partners and Medici Ventures, the investing arm of retail giant Overstock, the company said.

PeerNova declined to disclose any further financial details of the deal.

The sizable funding validates the one-time bitcoin mining company’s shift to the enterprise blockchain designed to improve data reporting processes for financial services companies.

“It has been much harder for blockchain companies in the last 12 months to go raise capital,” PeerNova’s CEO Gangesh Ganesan told CoinDesk. “The fact that we raised a big around is an indication of investors’ confidence in our model.”

In addition to new hires for its U.S. and London operations, the company has been negotiating with local financial authorities to open an office in Singapore as many of its clients have businesses in Asia, Ganesan said.

San Jose-based PeerNova started off as a bitcoin mining company through a merger in 2014 between cloud mining firm CloudHashing and enterprise hardware designer HighBitcoin.

The company shifted its focus from mining infrastructure services to enterprise blockchain software with a $8.6 million Series A funding later in the same year. Mosaik Partners, former AOL CEO Steve Case and Crypto Currency Partners invested in this round.

The company uses proprietary blockchain technology to reduce reporting inefficiencies by replacing traditional auditors with cryptography.

Unlike most peer blockchain solutions, PeerNova’s product Cuneiform does not have a distributed ledger, as it only provides a reference point for a client to streamline the querying of their databases, creating cryptographic evidence of events.

The company helped financial services giant State Street with sorting tax liabilities for hedge funds by using the blockchain system to track their investments and reinvestments over multiple years.

PeerNova further developed its enterprise blockchain business with $5 million through the second tranche of the Series A financing in March 2016. The funding was also Overstock’s first investment in the bitcoin industry.

In November 2016, Chinese conglomerate Zhejiang Zhongnan Holdings Group acquired five percent of PeerNova for $4 million.

Key image via Shutterstock