Ironchip, the firm specialized in digital identity based on intelligent location, closes a new round of financing of 2.1 million euros led by Easo Ventures, Inveready and ABANCA.
IRONCHIP, founded by Basque entrepreneurs Julen Martínez and Jose Fernando Gómez, has closed a new round worth 2.1 million euros..
Added to this new injection of capital is the financial institution ABANCA, which co-leads the round with current investors, Easo Ventures and Inveready, who maintain their confidence in Ironchip's team and technology. In addition, the CDTI, body of the General State Administration, is joining this round through its Innvierte program, and Alex Rocha, expert in cybersecurity and technology, CEO of Swivel Secure Europe and also General Director of BIO-key EMEA (NASDAQ: BKYI), which is joining this round as a business angel and advisor in the internationalization and expansion process.
Ironchip’s technology launches the definitive security approach, the intelligent location, technology that analyzes the behaviour of human mobility to make it a factor of our digital identity. Ironchip proposes location as a key data of human behaviour, unique data, since it defends that the places we frequent in our day-to-day are a set of data that can identify us in a specific way, as well as our date of birth, name or DNI, becoming one more factor of our identity. It refers to the study Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility published on March 25, 2013, in which the idea that "four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of individuals” was already defended.
Julen Martinez, CEO and co-founder of Ironchip adds that "nowadays, the cyber war between governments, forced teleworking due to a global epidemic, the digitalization of the industry... have led to endless cyber attacks that have alerted from governments to financial entities, knowing that more than 98% of these vulnerabilities are carried out remotely. That is why location becomes vital information capable of allowing companies, including governments, to protect themselves and make better decisions in light of these new attacks.” In addition, Julen takes the opportunity to highlight the impulse received from organizations such as INCIBE, Cybasque, Spri, BerriUp, BCSC... in the initial phases of the project, which have been impulses of value during this path traveled before such an innovative idea and technology.
Ironchip's participation in the ABANCA Innova startup program has allowed them to validate the technology and the value proposition for the financial sector with the support of its specialized units. A successful pilot has been the lever for ABANCA to become a valuable partner for the company. Javier Carral Martínez, Executive Director of Investment Banking and M&A at ABANCA, points out that "We invest in sustainable startups that add value to the bank's business model. Optimizing risk management is one of our strategic pillars and cybersecurity is one of the main challenges that we have to address in a digital and hyperconnected society. We invest in the disruptive value proposition offered by Ironchip and in its development team that has demonstrated a high capacity for execution. ABANCA has strengthened its commercial presence in the Basque Country and after the purchase of Bankoa's commercial network, ABANCA has 32 retail offices, 7 business offices, 1 Corporate Banking office and a team of more than 250 people. With this new investment in Ironchip we support talent and disruptive entrepreneurship in the region”.
Roger Piqué, Founding Partner of Inveready Asset Management points out the need to accelerate digital transformation and rely on the innovation of new technologies, highlighting that "solutions such as Ironchip's allow companies to mitigate and detect possible threats in cybersecurity matters, that it is already recognized as one of the great global problems of our time”. Along these same lines, Pedro Muñoz Baroja, Managing Partner at Easo Ventures adds that "We have seen Ironchip growing up since its beginnings at the Berriup Accelerator and that has evolved in an incredible way. We were always struck by the simplicity of its solution to solve major problems in the market".
Necessary impulse to expand to the world
This financing, apart from accelerating the growth of the company and strengthening the technical and commercial teams, it will be used for its international launch and its consolidation in the international market through new indirect channels, a search for partners in which the company is currently immersed. For this, it will have the advice of Alex Rocha, who affirms that "Ironchip will revolutionize the authentication and authorization market, in addition to providing native and exclusive integrations that are so necessary today to secure teleworking, fraud control and digital identification. The digital identity with the non-intrusive security layer based on intelligent location will enable various applications in various markets such as online commerce, electronic banking or fraud prevention". In addition, it will also serve to consolidate Ironchip's solutions and evaluate the technology through different certificates that accredit its ability to protect the most critical systems and for its penetration in the most demanding sectors.
