Filament raises $5 Million to bring the blockchain to the Internet of things

Filament, a start-up company founded in 2012, recently raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Bullpen Capital and including contributions from Verizon Ventures Crosslink Capital, Samsung Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Haystack, Working Lab Capital, Techstars, among others. It seeks to bring the blockchain to tomorrow's Internet of Things (IoT).

This marks the first public investment by Samsung Ventures, the capital wing of Samsung, in a blockchain tech firm.

ADEPT or Autonomous Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Telemetry, announced by IBM in January in partnership with Samsung, utilized  the bitcoin and Ethereum networks to build a distributed network of devices - a decentralized IoT.

Eric Jennings, Filament Co-founder and CEO, spoke of the start-up as a decentralized IoT software stack that employs the bitcoin blockchain to allow devices to hold unique identities on a public ledger. He further added that by creating a smart device directory, its IoT devices will enable secure communication, execution of smart contracts and sending microtransactions.

The funding will target customers ranging from small businesses to big companies in the oil and gas, manufacturing, agriculture and mining sectors.

Jennings told CoinDesk:

"Almost all these companies have the same concern - 'What is my IoT strategy?' Many of these companies are good at what they build but they don't have a lot of expertise in mesh networking or blockchains, but they know they need to connect these networks to gain efficiencies or risk going out of business."