Helsinki-based startup Xiphera closes its first investment round led by Nordic VC Fund Gorilla Capital with the participation of Korpun Seed Ltd from SijoittajaPRO Corporate Finance and Ääkköset Oy. Founded by Matti Tommiska and Kimmo Järvinen, Finnish company designs hardware-based security solutions using proven cryptographic algorithms. This late seed financing round totalling €480K will be helping Xiphera’s growth on its way to be a scaleup company.
Xiphera’s first financing round successfully completed
“The external investors will also bring their considerable expertise and business acumen to our company”, says Xiphera’s CEO and Co-Founder Matti Tommiska.
Xiphera’s first financing round was led by anchor investor Gorilla Capital, which was joined by two other institutional investors — Korpun Seed Ltd from SijoittajaPRO Corporate Finance and Ääkköset Oy — as the three main investors. Additional individual investors also joined the late seed financing round totalling 480k€.
Xiphera is a bootstrapped company and it has focused on organic and profitable growth during its entire history. However, there are times in a company’s journey when external investment enables strategic and proactive activities, and with the successfully completed financing round Xiphera will be able to speed up its transition from a startup company into a scaleup company.
Late seed financing rounds are typically targeted for companies which have demonstrated customer traction and plan to continue and accelerate their growth. Xiphera being a five-year-old, cash-flow positive company with full ownership by its Co-Founders until 2022 is an ideal target for late seed financing, and the external investment will be used to generate business growth and further international expansion.
“The external investors will also bring their considerable expertise and business acumen to our company”, says Xiphera’s CEO and Co-Founder Matti Tommiska, “The successfully completed financing round combined with Xiphera’s recently announced admission into Business Finland’s Young Innovative Companies (NIY) Program admission into Business Finland’s Young Innovative Companies (NIY) Program will give us the tools to accelerate our international growth. I am absolutely confident that we will be the leading provider of secure and high performance cryptographic Intellectual Property cores for FPGAs and ASICs.”
Xiphera’s main investors
Scaleup companies benefit greatly from the right network and supporting connections for their business to grow and succeed. Xiphera’s three main investors, Gorilla Capital, Korpun Seed Ltd, and Ääkköset Oy, will support Xiphera’s expansion and business development in multiple ways. The following quotes summarise the driving motives of Xiphera’s main investors, with the common themes being a passionate team, solving real-world customer problems both today and in the future, and demonstrated traction.
“Despite being founded by PhDs and developing something fairly complex and deep tech, Xiphera is not a science project. It addresses a genuine business problem — which is only boosted during these turbulent times — and the founders demonstrate a healthy commercial attitude.
We like founders who have a passion for the customer problem and felt strong alignment with Xiphera. We’re excited to be part of the next leg of Xiphera’s journey” says Risto Rautakorpi, Gorilla Capital.
“Cybersecurity is a big megatrend and we are proud to solve these problems together with Xiphera. Xiphera has a unique team with deep knowledge in the hardware-based security solutions. We love companies that have the ability to grow profitably without external funding in the first years of the company’s journey. One of the big rules of investing is “Don’t invest in something you don’t understand”.
We proudly announce that we have no deep understanding about cybersecurity, but we trust the team of Xiphera and that is why we invest” says Matias Itkonen, SijoittajaPRO Corporate Finance / Korpun Seed Ltd.
“Nobody can ignore data protection and privacy. All businesses need to safe-guard intellectual property and proprietary data, such as their AI models and customer secrets. Cryptography is a key component in this and it has to be blazing fast, local and trustworthy. By investing in Xiphera we are investing in the trends of privacy protection, Zero Trust, edge computing and safe ML/AI. Above all, we are investing in a great team that can handle even the post-quantum concerns on a global scale.” — Ääkköset Oy.
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