CB Insights Buys Blockdata to Build Out Blockchain Data Offering

Netherlands-based Blockdata, which provides qualitative insights into the range of large enterprises using blockchain technology, has been acquired by data provider CB Insights.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. New York City’s CB Insights will be opening an office in Amsterdam, while Blockdata will remain a standalone product with its own team. Blockdata’s work will also be available to CB Insights clients, the companies said.

The acquisition demonstrates that large firms are still interested in deploying distributed ledger technology (DLT) within their firewalls, and are looking for fast and thorough insights into the complex ecosystem that has grown up around enterprise blockchain.

Following the hype around DLT in 2017, the last eight months have seen large financial and enterprise clients repeatedly ask about data sources on the enterprise blockchain space, according to Anand Sanwal, CEO and co-founder of CB Insights.

“It’s become something that our clients are increasingly talking about as big and practical,” he said. “At the same time, our clients were overwhelmed with the number of companies and projects that were going on, and were struggling to identify what exactly was happening and the best use cases.”

As well as financial clients, Sanwal said there is interest from governments – with central banks exploring digital currencies included in that bucket – as well as hot spots like supply chain leading to interest from the likes of consumer packing firms, logistics providers and so on.

There have been various reports stating that enterprise blockchain has been languishing in Gartner’s famous “trough of disillusionment.”

“I wouldn’t say there has been a dropoff; we just see interest growing,” said Jonathan Knegtel, co-founder of Blockdata. “We started out before the crypto winter [of 2018] came along. But we’ve always said it’s about the technology, not about making money in this space. It’s about shared sources of truth and what that can do for companies.”

Knetgtel pointed out that Blockdata drills into many areas of the blockchain world, not just enterprise DLT, but also custody providers, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), stablecoins, DeFi and the like.

The Amsterdam-based five-man team, which is set to grow significantly now, has previously raised a total of roughly $504,000 in angel investments. 

This is CB Insights’ second acquisition following its July 2020 buy of the assets of Dow Jones’ VentureSource. 

“Blockdata’s DNA is very similar to ours,” said CB Insights’ Sanwal. “We will take unstructured documents, including news and other data sources, and build technology that will classify and extract structured data from them.”