Blockchain company Storj receives $3 million in seed round funding, targeting enterprise cloud

Storj, which started out as a blockchain-powered “decentralized Dropbox,” has now evolved into an enterprise-grade storage system with real venture capital backing.

Today, Atlanta-based Storj Labs announced that it has received $3 million in seed funding, with participants including from venture capital firms Google Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and individual investors from Techstars.

This round of financing also marks the first time that Storj Labs has received external capital since it conducted a blockchain token crowdfunding in 2014.

Storj CEO Shawn Wilkinson told Storj that the funding marks the end of a long experiment for the company, which has now expanded to 13 employees and grown from a fledgling idea to one that can use experimental technology to provide security support to enterprise partners.

Wilkinson told CoinDesk:

“We went from ‘cryptocurrency is cool,’ to ‘hey, it’s useful, but if we could simplify some of our services, that would be better.’ Now, customers just have to buy space through our network, and we help them do that.”

More specifically, the funds will help Storj continue to build out its peer-to-peer file storage marketplace and support more partners like Cox Communications, with which Storj signed a deal in December.

It is reported that Storj's technology provides data hosting services to its customers through an open user blockchain network. Storj uses a traditional software as a service (SaaS) model to provide this service to Cox.

Participants in the network will use a digital token called "storjcoin".

The past of Storj tokens

Although Storj pursued a more traditional path to complete financing, it used the ICO model to raise funds in its first week. It is reported that Storj initially raised $460,000 by selling its token Storjcoin X. As of press time, the total market value of the digital token has reached $8.29 million (data from Coinmarketcap)

Looking ahead, Wilkinson said Storj plans to focus on more platform integration work to make its services more widely used and bring more value to participants.

For example, Storj recently revealed that its technology is now available in Web browsers, and in December it added its tools to cloud application platform Heroku, both with the goal of expanding Storj's audience.