Smarter Contracts, the pioneers behind Pulse®, a cutting-edge blockchain-based consent and permissions management protocol, have today announced that they have agreed to up to £2.65M of equity funding into the company. The investment sets the stage for an exciting phase of rapid expansion for the UK-based data privacy tech company and positions them as one to watch in 2024.

The follow-on funding was made via one of their existing private investors and comes less than 5 months after Smarter Contracts had announced over $1 million of equity investment into the company. The investment demonstrates a resounding vote of confidence in the Smarter Contracts team, their traction, and the quality of the products and services they have developed and those that are in development.

Most of the funding will be used to increase Smarter Contracts’ development and design capacity, giving them the scale they need to enhance the product features of Pulse®, while servicing the growing demands of their expanding customer base and pipeline. Some of the work they will undertake includes extending the functionality of the smart contract underpinning the Pulse® protocol and accelerating the fusion of Pulse® with generative AI, the latter of which will be done in collaboration with the respected AI and Data Science company Elder Research, who took a minority stake in Smarter Contracts in February 2021.

The investment demonstrates the relevance of Pulse®, which the team describes as being a "proof-of-permissions protocol." With organisations lacking a real-time view over how their customer on-chain and off-chain data can be shared and used by internal and external stakeholders they're confronted with critical choices regarding their customer data: use it at risk or don't use it at all.

Pulse® can mitigate the need for such decisions needing to be made. It provides organisations with a real-time view of the relevant data permissions an organisation has when it comes to the processing and sharing of their customers' data. As such, Pulse® builds trust in how that data can be shared and used, whilst unlocking powerful insights and analytics that lead to compliant personalisation and more relevant products and services being offered.

Wayne Lloyd, Founder and CEO of Smarter Contracts, states, "I'm extremely proud that we're able to announce this investment into Smarter Contracts. My team deserves all the accolades given how much hard work and commitment they have put into building a world-class product that solves real problems in relation to data and data privacy. The problems we saw in 2019 have manifested as we expected and the future we saw back then has arrived. I'm delighted we're arriving at this point with the right product, the right team, favourable regulatory conditions that support the need for a solution like Pulse® and the funding we need to scale. It marks a very exciting moment in the company's history, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank our investors for believing in the team and the vision we have."