According to its website, Blockstream aims to “develop new ways to accelerate innovation in crypto currencies, open assets and smart contracts.” The company announced today that its raised $21 million in funding from some of the world most powerful outfits, including Montreal’s Real Ventures.
On its site, Blockstream CEO Austin Hill stated that they have nearly 40 investors and the round was led by Reid Hoffman, Khosla Ventures and Real Ventures, with investments from Nicolas Berggruen, Crypto Currency Partners, Future\Perfect Ventures, Danny Hillis, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Max Levchin, Mosaic Ventures, Ray Ozzie, Ribbit Capital, Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures and others.
Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, stated on a post on its site that “As Bitcoin evolves, Blockstream will play a huge role in helping it maintain its momentum, by making it easy to add new capabilities to the platform. And Blockstream’s success will in turn generate new waves of technical and entrepreneurial innovation — it will help make Bitcoin the kind of open, highly adaptive platform upon which a vast array of complementary products and services can be built.”
Real Ventures noted that, “We are very happy that Blockstream gave us the opportunity to participate in this journey and we look forward to becoming an even more active investor in the new ecosystem of companies, products and services that Blockstream will enable.”