Do you want to know about the companies that are investing in blockchain? If you do, then you have come to the right place. Innovation comes at a cost, and it is up to big companies to provide the cost for the initial big push.
Blockchain innovation is no different. It requires collaboration from the largest companies and innovative startups to push the boundaries. Blockchain technology is currently in its early stages, where there is still time for it to mature. There are already multiple projects related to blockchain that are trying to solve the distributed ledger problem in new ways.
In this article, we will take a look at the top companies investing in blockchain. When we say they are investing, they are either putting the money in to advance the blockchain technology or utilizing the blockchain technology themselves to improve its state of evolution, adoption, and growth.
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What is Blockchain?
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Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology. It offers the ability to communicate, transact, and store data without a centralized entity.
A blockchain network consists of peers. Each of the peers has a copy of the distributed ledger for public networks. For private networks, peers can be picked for participation and carrying the distributed ledgers.
There are some key features of blockchain that make it so amazing! These features include:
- Immutability
- Transparency
- Security
- Distributed ledger
And so on!
Blockchain: Hype or Not?
Blockchain’s hype is something that not every one of us can agree on. Is blockchain really going to change how we solve problems in the future? Well, that’s hard to answer. But, there are still different opinions on whether blockchain is the answer to all the problems.
We are discussing blockchain hype because it determines the investment drive of companies. However, we can also see the situation from a different scope where the company’s investment impacts the hype surrounding blockchain.
In any of the cases, it is hard to ascertain the real impact of blockchain until it matures. Thus, if you pick up the numbers, predictions indicate that blockchain development is bound to grow in the coming years. Apart from the development of budget growth, blockchain spending will also see a 76% year-by-year growth and can reach $14.4 billion by 2020.
Bruce Schneier, a security technologist, is not a fan of blockchain technology. His piece on why there is no good reason to trust blockchain on Weird explains why he thinks that way.
On the other hand, if we take cryptocurrencies, then blockchain might be in a good place. Bitcoin soared to new heights in 2019, where it reached $19K. However, it did fall to a mere 3$K in the upcoming weeks, but it is now hovering stable around $10K. There are already predictions by many investment gurus on how bitcoin can read $100K in the future. If it will reach there or not is a debate for another topic.
Get familiar with the terms related to blockchain with Blockchain Basics Flashcards.
Companies Investing In Blockchain
Now that we have covered quite a bit about the blockchain, it is now time to see which companies are mostly interested in blockchain technology and are helping it grow to new heights.
If you are interested in learning which companies are using blockchain technology, check out the detailed article on it: What Companies Are Using Blockchain Technology?
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Finance
The finance sector is one of those sectors that have a good reception for blockchain technologies. The financial sector companies are also more conscious when it comes to seeing the benefits and, hence, coming forward to invest in the technology.
The financial companies investing in blockchain include the following:
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American Express Company
The American Express Company is a credit giant that is trying to test blockchain technology. By doing so, they will provide more value and power to their vendors and hence using blockchain technology. They operate in multiple segments, including Global Merchant, Global Consumer Services Group, and more!
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Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria
Another financial company that is invested in the blockchain is Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentina. The bank recently closed a 75 million pound corporate loan using Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. With a market cap of $21.8B, they are one of the largest banks in Spain. They engage in different sectors including private banking, asset management, retail banking, and wholesale banking.
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Mizuho Financial Group
Mizuho Financial Group from Japan is one of the early adopters and has invested in multiple blockchain projects. They are a holding company that provides multiple financial services including trust banking, securities, banking, and others!
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BHP Billiton Limited
BHP Billion is one of the largest mining companies that is trying to improve its supply chain with the help of blockchain. There is no doubt that a blockchain-powered supply chain can be beneficial for a business if implemented correctly. To learn more about how the supply chain is impacted with blockchain, check out our article on it: Blockchain For Supply Chain: The Game Changer
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Prudential Financial
Prudential financial is another giant financial company and is known for backing up Blockchain Firm Digital Currency Group. Along with them, Foxconn and Western Union have also invested in the Group, improving the blockchain technology landscape.
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Intesa Sanpaolo
Intesa Sanpaolo is an Italian bank that has invested in public blockchains. For now, they have invested in bitcoin technology and Ethereum. Therefore, they are using these two technologies to improve their business processes.
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Sberbank Russia
Sberbank Russia is a Russian bank. They launched a blockchain lab and are also working with Russia’s securities to explore the idea of blockchain corporate bonds. In reality. they engage in both retail and corporate banking activities, including settlement services, payroll projects, asset management, corporate loans, and more!
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Royal Bank of Canada
The Royal Bank of Canada is exploring blockchain technology by checking out the different blockchain solutions for automating credit scores. They are based in Canada and operate through many segments including insurance, wealth management, commercial and personal banking, and so on!
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Banco Santander
Banco Santander is another popular bank in Spain. Their investment is in the Ripple technology and also in Digital Asset Holdings. They work in different segments including Santander Global Platform, South America, and North America.
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BNP Paribas
A France-based BNP Paribas bank that is investing in blockchain technology to internal treasury operations. They operate in multiple sectors, including corporate institutional banking, retail services, helping community associations, individuals, entrepreneurs and others.
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Bank of China Ltd.
Bank of China Ltd. is one of the biggest chinese banks that have invested in blockchain technology. They are testing financial applications using blockchain technology and have already worked hard towards improving its integration. They have also filed related patents on blockchain technology usage on the financial applications.
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Wells Fargo & Company
Well Fargo & Company is a well-known company in the United States. They are financial services that are community-based and are diversified in nature. They engage in multiple activities, including investments, insurance, banking, commercial finance, consumer and mortgage.
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Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the biggest players in the blockchain technology investment funds. They also have a good number of prolific patents related to blockchain technology. They want to automate the creation of credit letters with the help of ethereum blockchain.
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JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is another USA company that is contributing to Quorum. Quorum is a known open-source community and JPMorgan Chase and Co. is working to improve it. It is a financial holding company that offers investment and financial services.
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Technology
The technology companies are also in the race for improving blockchain technology. After all, blockchain is a technology, and there is no doubt that the technological companies can benefit immensely from it if it becomes mainstream or solves technological problems in the future.
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Oracle Corporation
Oracle is one of the technology companies that are in the frontier of blockchain development and collaboration. Furthermore, they offer their blockchain services to other companies so that they do not have to build it from scratch. Thor cloud service and SaaS applications can work with different business processes, including the supply chain. They also offer on-premises editions.
- Oracle Blockchain Platform Cloud Service
- Oracle Blockchain Platform Enterprise Platform
- Intelligent Track and Trace
- Oracle Database 20c Blockchain Tables
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Apple Inc
Apple is a computer technology giant that is working behind the door on blockchain technology. They have filed patents to timestamp data. They are also working on using it in different sections of their business process, but the word is not out there on how they are going to approach the implementation process.
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Alphabet
Alphabet is an umbrella corporation that incorporates Google. They are working with Digital Asset so that they can include blockchain platforms and their related developer tools to the Google Cloud Platform ecosystem. Google, on the other hand, is also investing their resources and talent in blockchain technology. They now offer services to deploy cloud applications or hybrid blockchain using Google Cloud and Ethereum.
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Tencent Holdings Ltd
Tencent Holdings Ltd: is a China-based investment company that engages in online advertising services and value-added services. They announced they are exploring taxes and blockchain.
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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd
Alibaba Cloud offers blockchain as a service where they enable businesses’ enterprise-level platform without the need to manage the actual infrastructure. Their BaaS supports Ant Blockchain technologies, Quorum, and Hyperledger Fabric.
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Facebook
Facebook revealed their Libra cryptocurrency plans and integrated the cryptocurrency payment plan to the social media platforms. The initial support for them was huge. With time, they have refined the process and now they will focus on government-backed cryptocurrencies. Their other project is Novi, which is a digital wallet.
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IBM
IBM is also the front-runner when it comes to investing in blockchain. Their IBM blockchain service enables businesses to use blockchain technology and not worry about creating the blockchain network. Businesses can join existing networks, build their own solution, and create a solution that works!
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Amazon.com
Amazon is also heavily invested in blockchain technology. They are offering cloud integration to popular blockchain solutions including Ethereum. More so, they are also partnered with ConsenSys. Apart from that, they also offer the Amazon Managed Blockchain, which lets businesses to manage and create scalable blockchain networks. With it, businesses can use Hyperledger Fabric with support for Ethereum coming soon. They also have their own verifiable ledger database technology Amazon QLDB.
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Intel
Intel also understands the importance of blockchain and hence is working towards shaping blockchain technology. So, Intel is currently collaborating with other industry leaders, customers and thought leaders to improve blockchain technology and help mature it. In their blockchain ecosystem, they have three major blockchain players, including Hyperledger, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and R3.
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Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley is a US company that is interested in improving blockchain technology. They are invested in bitcoin futures contracts for their customers.
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Microsoft Corporation
Just like other cloud service providers, they also provide blockchain services using Azure. They offer Azure-blockchain-service, Azure-blockchain-workbench and Azure-blockchain-development-kit.
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Samsung Electronics Co.
Samsung is also keen to improve blockchain and has been working on its Nexledger platform that will track the global supply chain.
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Insurance
The insurance industry is in dire need of chance, and blockchain technology can be a catalyst to change. The key companies that are investing in blockchain include:
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AIA Group
AIA Group from Hongkong is an insurance giant. They revealed thor new blockchain-powered insurance platform, bancassurance, which utilizes their blockchain accelerator and Hyperledger Fabric.
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MetLife Inc.
MetLife from the United States is partnering up with other companies such as IBM and Majesco so that they can build their own insurance blockchain platform.
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AXA Group
AXA group from France launched its new Fizzy smart contract platform that automates flight insurance payments. It utilizes ethereum at its core.
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Allianz SE
Allianz SE is working towards creating a self-reliant insurance platform. They also created a prototype for their platform.
Entertainment
The entertainment industry is also not shying away from investing in blockchain. The two key players that we know that are actively investing in blockchain technology are:
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Walt Disney Company
Walt Disney Company is a US-based company using Dragonchain, a blockchain solution for improving its platform. They developed it internally in 2014 and then open-sourced it in 2016. There is also a commercial entity that is managed by the Dragon Company.
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Comcast Corporation
Comcast Corporation is interested in blockchain technology and is showing that interest by investing in blockchain startups. They also announced their own blockchain platform known as Blockgraph. More so, it is a peer-to-peer platform that will help protect the marketers and media companies’ data.
Automobiles
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Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is investing in blockchain as they plan to use it for the auto industry. They patented their research on controlling traffic flow using blockchain.
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Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is planning to launch its blockchain solution. They have already joined hands with Ripple payments network
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Daimler AG
Daimler AG from Germany also has a keen interest in blockchain as they made a 100-pound corporate bond with ethereum. They are makers of Mercedes-Benz and are experimenting with their own cryptocurrency.
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Toyota Motor Corp.
Toyota Motor Corp. is another automobile company that is exploring blockchain. Furthermore, they are exploring the idea of enabling self-driving cars with blockchain payments.
Food, Supply Chain and Retail, and others
Other companies in the market are actively investing in blockchain technology. They are as below.
- Nestle
- Anheuser-Busch InBev
- Pfizer
- Walmart
- Agricultural Bank of China
- ING Group
- Siemens AG
- Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
- China Construction Bank Corporation
- Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
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Conclusion
This leads us to the end of our top companies investing in blockchain 2020. As you can see, there are so many companies in different verticals investing in blockchain technology and helping evolve it to new heights. More so, Blockchain is still in its infancy stage, and it will take the effort of all the major players and startups to make it mature. The blockchain adoption rate is also improving with time, and we can surely see it in a better place in the near future.
*Disclaimer: The article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide any investment advice. Claims made in this article do not constitute investment advice and should not be taken as such. 101 Blockchains shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this article. Do your own research!
