RKVST, the integrity, transparency and trust platform for digital supply chain operations, has announced the first close of a Series A funding round of $7.5million.
RKVST is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform underpinned by distributed ledger technology and delivered through a simple-to-consume API (Application Programming Interface) that integrates easily with existing software, systems and security policies.
Equally effective for nuclear waste and software bills of materials (SBOMs), RKVST enables organisations to build verifiable digital supply chains. The company was founded in Cambridge in 2018 and is based in Wellington House on East Road. Investors in the Series A raise are Ridgeline, Acadia Woods, Cyber Mentor Fund, and Long Run Capital.
The funding will be used to accelerate go-to-market plans, support developers using the RKVST API to add transparency and accountability to supply chain processes, grow partner ecosystems and accelerate feature development.
Ryan Clinton, general partner at Ridgeline, joins the RKVST board of directors.
Rusty Cumpston, RKVST CEO, said: “Today, we can replace the expensive, redundant, error-prone supply chain processes businesses currently use with an SaaS platform to build verifiable digital supply chain operations.
“This enables organisations of all sizes to move faster, reduce cost, reduce risk and increase business resiliency. We’re thrilled to be working with great investors who have a wealth of experience in building successful B2B SaaS businesses and delighted that Ryan Clinton is now on our board of directors.”
RKVST now powers verifiable digital supply chains for a growing customer base to track, trace and share the provenance of enterprise assets, enabling more resilient operations and accountability for improved decision-making.
Ryan Clinton, co-founder and general partner at Ridgeline, says: “We are excited to invest in and work with the RKVST team. Supply chain resilience is broadly needed for all types of physical and digital assets. We hear it from our limited partners and we’ve seen the increasing importance that governments and commercial industry are placing on supply chain security – from US Government Executive Order 14028 and the work of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) – looking to address standards for supply chain integrity, transparency and trust.
“There’s an impressive team at RKVST with a proven track record, having built multiple successful start-ups, and they are ideally suited to deliver on this growing business opportunity.”
Liz Harris, VP marketing, said: “RKVST keeps a complete and untampered record of who did what when, in other words an evidence registry of shared assets.
“We get clients the data you need from anywhere in your supply chain without the frustration, time wasting and uncertainty of manual data verification.”
She added that RKVST (pronounced ‘Archivist’) operates remotely with a staff of 17 in the UK (11 full-time in Cambridge) and six in the sales team in the US. One of the company’s clients is Cambridge-based SATAVIA, which enables aircraft operators to forecast, prevent, quantify and offset surface warming caused by aircraft-generated condensation trails or contrails.
Liz notes: “Immutable storage of flight-by-flight data, with clear oversight of provenance and governance, is a central requirement of climate benefit accounting and RKVST solves these technical challenges.”
