Overstock subsidiary Medici Ventures leads $8.2M investment in agricultural blockchain startup

GrainChain, a blockchain-based agricultural startup, has raised $8.2 million from Overstock subsidiary Medici Ventures, blockchain venture firm Eden Block, and other investors. 

Announced today, the funding round was led by Medici Ventures, which contributed $5 million to the total $8.2 million. The investment firm is an early investor of the startup, purchasing $2.5 million of GrainChain's equity shares in December 2018. At the time, the two companies agreed on a warrant that allows Medici to buy additional stakes in the startup, which the investment firm exercised in this latest funding round. 

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Founded in 2013, GrainChain runs a platform that tracks commodities on a distributed ledger. The firm develops software that certifies and monitors their inventories while using smart contracts to help farmers to trade and settle with buyers. 

“GrainChain has quietly become one of the most successful blockchain-meets-agriculture platforms on the market by allowing more and more farmers to receive fair value and prompt payment for their crops, while also selling to a larger pool of buyers,” Overstock CEO and Medici Ventures president Jonathan Johnson said in a statement. 

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Celia joined The Block as a reporter after earning her BA in the History of Science from the University of Chicago. Having spent years pondering over why 2+2 cannot equal 5, she is interested in the history and philosophy of mathematics, computation, and cryptography. She also had a very brief stint at Crunchbase News.