Ledger Wallet, a Paris, France-based provider of bitcoin security solutions, has raised 1.3 million euros in seed money to accelerate the development of its product line and expand its global reach. XAnge Capital, a French private equity and venture capital group, led the seed funding. Accompanying XAnge Capital are Pascal Gauthier, the former Criteo chief operating officer; Hi-Pay; Fred Potter, founder of NetAtmo; Thibaut Faures Fustel de Coulanges, vice president of Rentabiliweb Group; and Alain Tinguad Innovations.
Ledger Wallet since 2013 has developed security solutions to solve bitcoin security issues, such as protecting private keys. The company launched its Ledger Nano last December.
“Having successfully closed our seed round only two months after the public launch of our first consumer ready product is not only showing the growing interest for the bitcoin ecosystem, but also the very strong technical differentiator Ledger is bringing to the industry,” said Eric Larcheveque, CEO.
Ledger has opened a U.S. subsidiary, Ledger Technology Inc., with offices in San Francisco, Calif.
The company noted that bitcoin and other future blockchain applications cannot scale and achieve mass adoption without solutions to secure a user’s private keys.
Elements of a secure operating system
Ledger’s operating system includes secure devices and architectures including smartcards, hardware security modules and trusted execution environments.
Ledger aims to integrate open source and physical security. Such integration is important for bitcoin since it requires a security approach based on full openness and distributed consensus, the company noted.
By securing the seed capital, Ledger can focus on developing its product line and expanding its global reach.
In 2015, the company will develop customer-centric applications. These include improving the Ledger Wallet experience with Android and iOS companion apps. The company also plans to finalize Ledger Blue, a secure element based hardware wallet integrating a display and keyboard, as well as near field communications (NFC) and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) capabilities. The NFC and BLE will help integration with smartphones and point of sale terminals.
Ledger also plans to launch its LedgerOS integration, which it describes as the first real life application running on a trusted execution environment.
Looking forward
Looking forward to 2016, Ledger plans to have enterprise solutions based on hardware security modules (HSMs). Ledger’s HSM solutions will be able to control, secure and sign hundreds of transactions per seconds for exchanges, wallet APIs and enterprise payment applications.
Ledger’s team of 11 engineers and four-person support crew, led by Chief Technology Officer Nicolas Bacca, brings decades of expertise in the fields of security, cryptography, embedded hardware and UX design.
