Gatenox Announces $2.5m Seed Funding Led by C3 VC Fund to Challenge Existing AML/Sanctions Solutions for Corporate Clients
LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Gatenox, the UK-based provider of corporate client verified credentials, has raised a seven-figure amount from C3 VC Fund, a venture capital firm based in Frankfurt, Germany that invests in exceptional technology companies worldwide. Additional funding was provided by A100x Ventures and several prominent angel investors, including Matthew Niemerg and Antoni Zolciak, co-founders of Aleph Zero.
Gatenox is the Anti-money Laundering and Sanctions solution for corporate onboarding that starts with the customer. While working in financial institutions from early 2000, co-founder Pawel Kuskowski witnessed the hardship of growing businesses and at the same time complying with increased regulatory requirements. Today, everyone needs to be compliant with broadening regulations, but not everyone can afford to build a large team and pay for expensive compliance tools. This is even more difficult in the crypto world, where existing solutions are not a fit.
Gatenox was founded in 2022 by Pawel Kuskowski and Wojciech Zatorski. Pawel is the former CEO and founder of Coinfirm, a leading blockchain forensic company, and former Global Head of the AML Function at RBS. Wojciech is a technology and payments veteran, having built Blik, among other ventures.
“Know-Your-Business is top of mind for businesses operating in the crypto space today. With the challenges over the last months and the coming wave of new regulations, solutions around simplifying and streamlining credentials at the corporate level will be in high demand,” said Theo Woik, Managing Partner at C3 VC Fund. “Pawel and Wojtek are very experienced entrepreneurs and we are confident in their ability to develop and scale top SaaS solutions within crypto and beyond.”
According to Bloomberg, large investors with global assets totalling $100 trillion are becoming more crypto-curious, especially since the first half of 2022 as over-leverage and counterparty risk has been pushed out of the crypto space. Gatenox, with its expertise and unique KYB solutions, ensures that institutional customers and SMEs can seamlessly connect with crypto and gain the benefits of blockchain technology as a new native financial layer.
Gatenox, which focuses on streamlining Know-Your-Business (KYB) and sanctions processes for the crypto market, uniquely positions itself by simplifying and automating the onboarding process for corporate entities and SMEs. Gatenox has tested its solutions with well-established crypto companies and will be rolling out its suite of products in Q3 2022.
“Currently, the corporate onboarding solution is dramatically neglected. It takes months to onboard to crypto exchanges. In many situations, it is impossible for corporate clients to get access and benefits of DeFi and crypto in general due to the market-specifics,” said Pawel Kuskowski, CEO of Gatenox. ”After the fallout from LUNA, 3AC, Celsius and Voyager, it is inevitable that regulatory scrutiny will increase for the entire sector. There is also huge benefits for the crypto sector to properly manage their future counterparty risk.’
‘We see the corporate business side of the market as the fastest growing aspect of the crypto world” said Wojciech Zatorski, COO of Gatenox.’ There are interesting technology and user experience challenges in the AML compliance and institutional crypto onboarding world.’
Current KYC/AML processes are far from optimal, today they are both costly and ineffective. With Gatenox, customers onboard only once and re-use their data on multiple occasions, ultimately lowering the costs to almost zero per user. Cost efficiency is naturally a significant selling point, but the Gatenox team also seeks to focus intensely on conversion and data ownership.
“Gatenox aims to significantly improve the user experience for both retail and enterprise customers. As infrastructure builders, we seek to provide the Gatenox team with the support of Aleph Zero and Liminal privacy-enhancing technologies to safeguard consumer privacy in a secure, yet transparent fashion.” said Antoni Zolciak from AlephZero. “Pawel and Wojciech share over 20 years of combined experience in mobile technology, financial sector, security, and KYC/AML—including crypto compliance—which makes us feel more than confident in their execution abilities. We are excited to witness their journey from just an idea to the software prototype and a concluded pre-seed round.”
”We see customers dropping out of the process quite often. In most cases, it’s a cumbersome, boring sequence of steps that one must execute on any given occasion. With Gatenox, we aim to significantly increase the conversion rate and provide customers with an incredible experience”, said Pawel Kuskowski. ”We have built a platform with instant, frictionless onboarding for 350 million corporate clients and believe it as a better solution to the over 30,000 regulated crypto companies and their users.”
About C3 Management and C3 VC Fund
C3 Management GmbH is an asset management company focused on managing venture funds which invest in exceptional blockchain technology companies worldwide. C3‘s mission is, among other things, to accelerate growth, development and especially adoption of blockchain tech. Towards this mission, C3 manages the C3 VC Fund, which is partly funded by Block.one and offers developers and entrepreneurs the funding they need to create community-driven businesses leveraging crypto and blockchain. C3 VC Fund focuses on early and growth stage technology companies. C3 VC Fund operates worldwide and is located in Frankfurt, Germany.
About Gatenox
Gatenox is the one-click AML/KYC solution for institutional and individual account opening starts with the customer. Gatenox aims to become a go-to corporate onboarding identity node for exchanges, fintech companies, and banks. For further information, go to gatenox.com.
Contacts
Pawel Kuskowski, CEO, +48518320010, [email protected]
