Supply chain startup Fluent receives $1.65 million in seed funding

Fluent, a blockchain startup working on supply chain applications, has raised $1.65 million in new seed funding. Last year, the startup raised $850,000 from mass media company Thomson Reuters and Silicon Valley venture capital fund Draper Associates.

It is reported that this round of financing was led by New York venture capital firm ff Venture Capital , followed by Crosscut Ventures, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Draper Associates,分布式资本, Lindbergh Technology Fund and St. Louis Arch Angels.

In an interview, Fluent CEO Lamar Wilson told CoinDesk the company plans to use the new funding to attract new players and expand its existing team throughout the year.

The startup also revealed its first partner, Kansas-based Commerce Bancshares , which will use the Fluent platform to experiment with blockchain technology from several different angles in the coming months, including for business-to-business (B2B) payments and as a test for peer-to-peer capital generation and deployment.

Using blockchain as part of the supply chain concept is one of the factors that has gained traction for Fluent, the idea being that supply chains can reduce the risk of counterfeit or low-quality products by ensuring the validity of the product. And by recording these steps in a distributed way, supply chain members will be more honest.

According to Wilson, Fluent’s goal is to attract the attention of mainstream financial companies by using blockchain in supply chain management, and the cooperation with Commerce Bancshares is only the first step in its plan.

“We are all focused on the financial supply chain and we are completely focusing our attention in that direction,” he said.

Chris Wiedenmann, Vice President of Commercial Systems and Product Innovation at Commerce Bancshares, said:

“Commerce is keenly focused on innovation in the payment space and provides customers with highly competitive products and technologies,”

John Frankel, a partner at ff Venture Capital, told CoinDesk:

“(Supply chain) is an area we’ve long been interested in, and it’s great to see such a talented team take a new approach to reducing friction in global supply chain commerce.”