Consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion recently announced it had invested an undisclosed sum in Spring Labs, which is building out a blockchain-based data-sharing platform.
Now, TechCrunch has exclusive details on the size of that round and the nature of the relationship.
First off, the fact that TransUnion, a public company with a $20 billion market cap, chose to back and partner with four-year-old Spring Labs is significant in and of itself. A number of fintechs have popped up as of late aiming to disrupt the traditional model of evaluating an individual’s creditworthiness.
Spring Labs is one of them. The startup uses blockchain with the aim of creating a richer network effect of data that allows credit bureaus and others to predict the creditworthiness of people who are not in the traditional credit bureau system. It’s raising a $30 million Series B, led by TransUnion — one of the largest incumbents in an industry that Spring Labs is looking to shake up.
Spring Labs founder and CEO Adam Jiwan told TechCrunch that the two companies’ recent partnership evolved out of a series of discussions that began a couple of years ago.
“We knew a relationship with TransUnion in particular had the capacity to significantly accelerate our business,” he said. “And they said ‘if we’re going to help develop your business into something very significant, we’d like to have skin in the game.’ ”
While Jiwan would not reveal the valuation at which this Series B is being raised (it (Read more…)