The Concordium Foundation and Geely Holding Group have signed a joint venture agreement that will use Concordium’s blockchain technology to “become a leading blockchain technology and service provider in China”.
The JV will allow Geely and the Swiss-based non-profit to offer businesses and customers access to new blockchain platform-based business models and user DApps for all industries, including the automotive segment.
The JV marks a new era of collaboration, using Concordium’s strong cryptographic, safe, non-permission based blockchain with ID at the protocol level, and Geely’s “technological leadership and implementation power” in the Chinese market.
According to the agreement, the carmaker will own 80% of the JV, with the rest owned by Concordium. The new company, which will be operationally co-managed by both parties, is expected to be operational this year. The JV will cooperate with Genius & Guru – a company wholly owned by Geely – and assist customers in building business use cases and solutions, focusing on Digital Identity, Regulatory Technologies and Privacy Enhancement Technologies.
Aiming at serving future finance and promoting new tech in finance, Genius & Guru tries to build an open financial ecosystem with fintech at its core. Headquartered in Beijing, Genius & Guru has invested in financial institutions and fintech companies across several major cities in China and Copenhagen, Denmark.
In a press release, Geely says that blockchain technology provides a technical foundation for win-win collaboration and building mutual trust and safe, secure, quick transactions and interesting platform opportunities. Concordium – and its blockchain research centre in Aarhus, Denmark – contributes to the tech with its leading global research of cryptographic primitives for blockchain, and in the field of zero-knowledge proofs, peer-to-peer, and other spearheading blockchain research.
“This cooperation between Concordium and Geely is of great significance to both parties. We are actively pursuing transformational technologies by building alliances, and synergising global resources to create greater value for our end users. Being able to leverage Concordium’s world-class blockchain technology will set industry standards with its underlying infrastructure for blockchain applications,” said Daniel Donghui Li, CEO of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
“By joining forces in China we will apply and develop this technology further and explore pathways to build a leading blockchain industry ecology to reduce the cost of trust and provide companies with access to a platform with the tools they need to develop blockchain-based applications together and grow in the ‘Internet of Value’,” he added.
Of late, China’s top domestic auto brand has been busy with tech deals, and this JV comes after recent tie-ups with the world’s largest games company and owner of WeChat, Tencent; China’s internet giant Baidu; and electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn.
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Kinda cool if Geely (and Proton by extension) could be the first to blockchain secure the GKUI ecosystem they are using.