UK Blockchain Sharding Startup Calimero Raises $8.5 Million

Summary:
• Calimero is keen on building its sharding business through further expansion and hopes to enter the EVM ecosystem in the near future.

Blockchain infrastructure firm Calimero Network has just completed a seed funding round, bringing in $8.5 million. Khosla Ventures, Lyrik Ventures, and the Near Foundation led the round, with participation from GSR, FJ Labs, and Warburg Serres. The company said the money raised would be used for operational expenses and staff growth. The startup has a current staff of 15 but plans to increase that to 20 in the near future.

Calimero estimates that the funding raising will give the company runway for another three years, considering that 95% of its expenses are currently spent on salaries and benefits. This round of funding, which concluded in December 2022, featured an equity plus token warrants financing structure.

Calimero, its market niche and growth plans

The NEAR protocol forms the basis for Calimero, which functions as a flexible sidechain, enabling companies to store data in private shards while interacting with open-source blockchains. It offers users a system that retains NEAR’s many strengths while incorporating numerous additional capabilities that put a premium on privacy. This system can be considered as a network within a network. Users are able to create their own isolated blockchain networks (shards) using Calimero. Users can also exchange data amongst different shards from the same company, or even across different shards from different firms.

Currently in closed alpha, Calimero’s dashboard allows for the maintenance of private shards and an enterprise solution that is more concerned with assisting web2 businesses with scaling up through individualized and accessible support. Its private, adaptable enterprise shards meet the privacy needs of its customers while also providing them with simple access to data, analytics, and streamlined collaboration, and its open-source SDK is designed with developers in mind.

At present, the startup is concentrating on the Near market. Additionally, it is investigating the immensely popular Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem via Aurora, a Layer 2 scaling solution in Near protocol that enables compatibility with Ethereum network. Back in November of last year, Calimero and Freename.io announced their collaboration to give users of both platforms early access to NFT Domains on the.calimero TLD.