Okta, a company listed by Nasdaq, has joined the blockchain fever. According to an announcement made by the firm itself, it set up a brand new $50 million VC fund with the intention of investing in tech startups that are in the beginning phase; among those are blockchain projects.
With each passing day, more companies and investment firms see potential applications and extraordinary benefits in the blockchain technology, which can provide a necessary trust element that had been missing in many industries.
Okta and its Involvement in the Trusted Key Project
Okta is known for offering identity management services and solutions. The new fund is called Okta Ventures Fund Wednesday. Actually, the project is already underway since the newly-created fund has already made an investment in Trusted Key, an identity startup based in blockchain technology. The precise amount of the investment is not yet known.
Trusted Key seems to have all the right ingredients to succeed, and the Okta Ventures Fund Wednesday has seen the potential. The former is known for offering decentralized digital identity solutions that let companies and organizations “work together as ecosystems to share strongly proofed user identities with user consent.” The Trusted Key startup has a solid team with experience in its field: it was founded by former Oracle, Microsoft, and Symantec executives.
Okta wants to take full advantage of its venture fund to provide investments to startups that shift their focus and resources to build innovative solutions that use artificial intelligence (AI,) blockchain, and machine learning, among others. The company is based in San Francisco, California (The United States.)
Investing in a Growing Ecosystem of Startups
The firm’s chief operating officer and co-founder Frederic Kerrest stated that “In line with Okta’s vision of enabling any organization to use any technology, Okta Ventures will invest in the growing ecosystem of startups tackling issues like identity, security, and privacy.”
Okta not only offers investment capital, but it also has intentions to provide its portfolio firms with other resources and support ways, such as the use of its software, access to expertise, SDK and API design partnerships, and co-marketing opportunities, among others.
“Beyond investing in industry-wide innovation, we also recognize how valuable these advancements can be for our customers, who are often looking for solutions to some of the hard problems these companies are solving. We expect the partnerships with our portfolio companies to extend our platform, and we’re committed to providing significant value to these early stage startups. Trusted Key is a perfect example of a young company working on a big idea, and we look forward to collaborating to shape the future of identity,” continued Kerrest.
High-Profile Investors
Okta has been around in the community since 2009, and to date, it has raised more than $229 million in funding. The numbers are courtesy of Crunchbase. Okta has another exciting aspect going on for it: a number of high-profile investors back up the company, including Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and more.
The firm went public in the United States in April 2017, thanks to a successful IPO (Initial Public Offering) that helped it raise over $187 million. Shares were sold at $17 each, and more than 11 million of them were issued. Since then, the company’s popularity and success has soared, and each share now costs $89.
By Andres Chavez
