Member Article

Momentum gathers behind blockchain app Humaniq as it launches Cambridge innovation hub

Humaniq, the blockchain company that is building an Ethereum-powered banking app, has announced it is to open an innovation office in Cambridge after successfully completing its crowd sale and agreeing some important partnerships.

The startup, which has an office in London, has said it will open the new Innovation Centre as it looks to tap into the technological and academic expertise in the city, with regular hackathons and conferences promised at its ‘AI and Blockchain Lab’.

Humaniq’s founder, Alex Fork, commented: “This new innovation centre will provide an opportunity to be part of a lasting and growing ecosystem which has found success in many areas of innovation and which Humaniq will be able to contribute to and learn from as we grow.”

Humaniq recently closed its ICO, cryptocurrency parlance for Initial Coin Offering which allows early adopters the opportunity to purchase tokens to help firms raise cash, attracting over 10,000 investors and raising $4m in the process, effectively placing a £3.5m pre-seed valuation on the company.

Ultimately, the startup is hoping to become the bank of choice for the 2bn people around the world who currently have no access to banking services due to the lack of available services or necessary identification usually required to set up a bank account.

Humaniq intends to solve this problem by combining the ready availability of cheap smartphones with facial and voice recognition technology powered by its machine learning algorithms to solve the issue of identification.

Meanwhile, its bitcoin-style cryptocurrency, which is powered by the open source Ethereum blockchain platform, will allow users to send and receive payment, both from other users and from third party services such as insurance and pensions which can plug in to the technology.

Only founded in 2016, the startup has since gone on to sign agreements with auditing firm Deloitte, with the HMQ currency now trading on six major cryptocurrency exchanges, a key step in its widespread adoption.