Khosla Ventures, Lyrik Ventures, and the Near Foundation co-led a seed round that secured $8.5 million for the London-based blockchain infrastructure business Calimero Network. Investors such as GSR, FJ Labs, and Warburg Serres also participated in the seed round.
Calimero Network and Near Protocol
The Near protocol, a high-performance blockchain that became live on the mainnet in 2020, was the source of the Calimero Network. Sandi Fatic and Mario Halambek, the creators of Calimero, were the Near protocol’s first infrastructure engineers. Their startup creates private shard infrastructure, allowing businesses to safeguard sensitive data while utilizing open-source blockchains.
Sharding is the process of dividing a blockchain for use by several businesses into smaller networks. Companies can use Calimero to communicate with the public blockchain as well as store information on private shards.
“The companies we currently have in the [closed alpha] are mostly like web2.5 companies, either they used to be on mainnet and they’re looking for more privacy or they’re just coming into the space and don’t know much about blockchain but they know they need privacy and scaling,” -Sandi Fatic
Through Aurora, a Layer 2 scaling solution in Near that provides Ethereum compatibility, Calimero is now focusing on the Near ecosystem while simultaneously researching the Ethereum Virtual Machine environment.
About Seed Round
The startup’s team will grow to about 20 people from its current 15 members, according to Fatic. Also, Fatic said that equity and token warrants were employed as the fundraising mechanism. It raised money from VCs in July 2022, and then in December 2022, it received more funding from the Near Foundation.
The funding raised will be used for team management and growth. Staffing costs account for roughly 95% of startup costs, and the hike will provide Calimero with about three years of runway, according to Fatic.
“We are trying to be smart about it, hire the top-quality people and just be scrappy as much as possible. Because we have seen many times in the industry that companies would rely too much on fundraising and my opinion is that we should focus more on revenue and sustainable models and keeping the team small and expand when we need it.” – Sandi Fatic
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