Portland blockchain startup Provenance Chain Network has secured $4 million from an unnamed investor to further build out its supply chain tracking platform.
The capital comes from a multibillion private company that is also a customer of Provenance, said Amy McDougall, chief commercialization officer for the startup. The investor is in the workforce industry.
Provenance is building a platform that creates a digital twin of items that can be traced through the supply chain.
“We create a digital instance of what someone is trying to manage and answer questions for,” said McDougall. “We gather evidence against the requirements.”
For example, a manufacturer might need a titanium bolt that is not made in China. The specificity might be a requirement of trade or other government mandated restrictions, she said. So this means a buyer must be able to prove things like what a bolt is made of, can it withstand temperature requirements, where was it tested, how were the tests done, where did the metal come from, who turned it into a bolt.
“We can take the data and track it against the product,” she said, adding that suppliers and vendors provide the data to prove their claims.
Currently, this tracking is done with spreadsheets, she said. With Provenance, the team wants to create a more secure way to do this work and protect supplier IP and trade secrets in the process.
With this capital the company plans to hire across technology roles. They are looking for software developers, security specialists, full stack developers and blockchain developers. Capital will also be used for sales and marketing the platform.
The company has 20 employees, including full time and contractors. The bulk of the team is in the Portland-Vancouver metro. The company launched during the pandemic so it has opted to build remote first.
McDougall, who spent 18 years at Cisco, is well versed in leading a distributed team.
Until this round Provenance has been funded largely with government grants through the Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) program. Through this, the startup is working with the US Space Force.
“Our capital stack enabled us to cross the well-known SBIR ‘valley of death’ and position us for rapid product development and deployment across both the government and private sectors,” said founder and CEO Jeff Gaus in a written statement. For startups the “valley of death” occurs between initial funding and revenue generation.
“I cannot say enough about the SBIR program and our capital programs,” Gaus added.
The company has paying customers and has seen traction in defense, aerospace, semiconductor, and workforce development sectors. Between this round and early government grants and seed investments, the company has raised more than $12 million.
