Smart-Contract-As-A-Service SIMBA Chain Raises $1.5 Million

By Noah Long ● Jan 28, 2020
  • SIMBA Chain, a cloud-based smart-contract-as-a-service (SCaaS) platform that enables users to rapidly implement decentralized applications (dapps) for blockchain, announced it raised $1.5 million

SIMBA Chain — a cloud-based smart-contract-as-a-service (SCaaS) platform that enables users to rapidly implement decentralized applications (dapps) for blockchain — announced it has raised $1.5 million in a seed round of funding from leading venture capital and angel investors.

Investors in this round include Notre Dame’s Pit Road Fund, Elevate Ventures, First Source Capital, and individual angel investors. And the funding will be used for hiring additional sales and development personnel to accelerate market rollout and supporting the initial execution of a number of major government contracts, including one with the U.S. Air Force to secure its supply chain on battlefields and at home.

Serial entrepreneur Joel Neidig co-founded SIMBA Chain with University of Notre Dame faculty members Ian Taylor and Jarek Nabrzyski. Neidig serves as CEO and Taylor is SIMBA Chain’s CTO.

“SIMBA Chain was created so government and corporate entities can address the growing global threat to IT security posed by international ‘bad actors’ as well as individual hackers using blockchain. Our platform makes it simple for people with varying skillsets to quickly deploy dapps by auto-generating custom API that is not dependent on a single blockchain or distributed ledger technology,” said Neidig. “SIMBA Chain’s democratization of blockchain enables more organizations to eliminate the vulnerability of a single point of failure inherent in current IT enterprises by creating an immutable repository where once data is stored, it can’t be tampered with, changed or deleted.”

Last year, the company made strategic hires and participated in industry events like Microsoft’s Inspire conference and TechCrunch’s Disrupt Berlin

In conjunction with the funding round, Bryan Ritchie is joining the SIMBA Chain board of directors. Ritchie is a vice president and the Cathy and John Martin Associate Provost for Innovation at Notre Dame. And he also leads the IDEA Center, the University’s hub for innovation and commercialization.

“Notre Dame is committed to becoming one of the nation’s leading entrepreneurial and commercialization universities and has committed significant resources to advance faculty, student, alumni, and community startup companies and technology. The technology underpinning SIMBA Chain was developed at Notre Dame and the company itself was founded by community partners and faculty. I am particularly honored to serve on SIMBA Chain’s board of directors and help shepherd the company to commercial success, but equally important, have a role in transforming how data is stored, shared, and secured around the globe,” stated Ritchie.