Andreessen Horowitz Leads New Nym Investment Round

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19.11.2021
Picture: Nym team with Chelsea Manning 

According to Forbes, Silicon Valley Andreessen Horowitz just led Nym Technologies’ USD 13M Series A financing round. The Privacy startup based in Neuchâtel is among the first companies backed by the Californian Venture Capital firm in Switzerland. Nym is presently gearing up for its mainnet launch.

In a milestone announcement, Neuchâtel based Nym Technologies led by CEO Harry Halpin just closed a USD 13M Series A financing round to accelerate the advent of the private web powered by blockchain. According to Forbes, the investment round was led by Silicon Valley based Andreessen Horowitz (a16z Crypto). Other investors include Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, Tayssir Capital, Huobi Ventures, HashKey, Fenbushi Capital, and more than two dozen operators of validator nodes, or servers responsible for verifying transactions on the startup’s network. 

Earlier in July Nym closed already a CHF 6.5M funding round led by Polychain Capital with a host of European investors. The Tech4Trust Accelerator Alumni develops a novel approach to anonymize traffic. While the General Data Protection Regulation relies on companies to be trusted with personal data on the threat of fines, Nym prevents companies from data harvesting in the first place by using cryptography and decentralization rather than consent pop-up boxes. Unlike traditional VPNs, Tor, or Apple’s new privacy relay network, Nym anonymizes the traffic sent to any app from unwanted third parties, making it impossible to tell when or even if a user is even accessing a particular app. Even with traditional encryption and VPNs, a powerful adversary can determine “who is talking to whom, where and when” by looking at patterns in internet traffic using AI.

Gearing up for launch

As Nym gets closer to its mainnet launch, the Swiss privacy startup has already begun deploying fresh capital for new hires, expanding the original eight-member team to 30. Among them is Nym’s cofounder George Danezis, who briefly left the project to help design Facebook’s controversial digital currency Libra when another company he cofounded, Chainspace, was acquired by the social media giant. Danezis rejoined Nym in October. Additionally, Halpin says in the Forbes article that Nym will be giving out grants to independent third party developers starting next year.

(Press release – ES)
Picture: Nym team with Chelsea Manning 


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