The blockchain API platform Gem has closed a series A round this week with $7.1 million in seed funding. The investors involved included Pelion Venture Partners, KEC Ventures, Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group and RRE Ventures.

With funding secured, Gem intends to continue to support bitcoin-focused start-ups Bitwage and Purse. The funds raised will be spent on new hires, business support and growing a customer base.

Gem is a platform that provides bitcoin developers with tools to integrate bitcoin into an app or a service and increases security to the bank-grade level protecting systems from theft. The company has previously raised $4.9 million from seed and angel investors. According to CrunchBase, Gem’s total equity funding has now reached $12 million in altogether 5 rounds from 20 investors. 

“We believe blockchain technology will transform how people and companies interact,” said Micah Winkelspecht, CEO and founder of Gem. “It will underpin entire industries and, one day, produce a blockchain economy that will form the underlying architecture of our daily lives.”

In May 2015 Gem partnered with the UK-based bitcoin vault, Elliptic to provide additional security for Gem users.

Pelion Venture Partners which led the seed round is a US-based early-stage venture capital firm which focuses on open source, digital media, software, cloud computing, security and other innovation industries.

Sonya Belova