Microsoft leads a $20 million investment in Web3 data warehouse startup Space and Time

Venture capital firms and investors continue to pour millions into web3 startups despite the ongoing global economic downturn. Although venture funding has decreased in recent months, it has done little to slow down the momentum for web3 startups. Now, Web3-native data platform Space and Time becomes the latest to attract funding from high-profile investors.

Today, Space and Time announced it has secured $20 million in strategic funding from marquee investors led by Microsoft’s M12 fund, with participation from other investors including Framework Ventures, HashKey, Foresight Ventures, SevenX Ventures, Polygon, Blizzard the Avalanche Fund, Stratos, Hash Capital, Coin DCX and several Web3 leading communities and angel investors. Space and Time previously raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by crypto investment firm Framework Ventures.

Space and Time will use the funding proceeds to accelerate engineering and product development. Over 90% of funding will be dedicated to the product and customer adoption of Space and Time.

“We are excited to announce the strategic support of M12 and Microsoft, and extend our partnership with Chainlink,” said Nate Holiday, co-founder and CEO of Space and Time. “We are committed to automating the business logic of the world by directly connecting smart contracts to Space and Time’s data warehouse in order to enable new and advanced use cases in Web3. Space and Time sits at the intersection of on-chain and off-chain data computation and we are thrilled to work with world-class data partners to build the next generation data ecosystem for both decentralized applications and enterprises at scale throughout the world.”

Space and Time joins on-chain and off-chain data in a trustless environment that powers low-latency transactions and enterprise-scale analytics. The protocol’s decentralized data warehousing capabilities allow the creation, joining and querying of immutable and mutable tables with cryptographic guarantees all within Space and Time’s next-generation data platform.

Providing familiar enterprise tools which process data volumes much larger than the current on-chain capacity is required to unlock new use cases for Web3. Space and Time is on a mission to make smart contracts more robust by connecting them with enterprise database capabilities using its novel cryptography.

Space and Time will allow the business logic in centralized systems to be automated and connected directly to smart contracts. As a platform and tools company, Microsoft is committed to supporting its partners and customers with their technology needs, including Web3 scenarios and use cases.

Space and Time will integrate with Microsoft Azure to provide Azure customers with an on-ramp to access, manage and perform analytics on blockchain-native data. The comprehensive Microsoft Azure cloud platform and industry-leading identity and security capabilities provide a trusted set of services to develop and run Web3 applications in this new era of ubiquitous computing.

“We look forward to seeing the ways in which Space and Time will allow the business logic in centralized systems to be automated and connected directly to smart contracts,” said Michelle Gonzalez, Corporate Vice President and Global Head of M12. “As blockchain technology finds applications in a wide range of industries, Space and Time is building the foundation to shape this work in a Web3 environment. M12 looks forward to partnering in that journey.”

As part of the Startup with Chainlink program, Space and Time will be working closely with Chainlink to extend the capabilities of hybrid smart contracts to power the trustless web. The platform will allow blockchain developers to build multichain dApps and rapidly generate analytical insights in a decentralized, low-cost and secure way.

“We’re proud to support Space and Time through the Startup with Chainlink program in their mission to build a decentralized data warehouse and bridge the on-chain and off-chain worlds with Chainlink oracles. With the total addressable market for trust-minimized applications in the trillions of dollars, providing core infrastructure to Web3 developers is crucial for scaling and meeting this global demand,” stated Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink.

Founded in 2022, Space and Time is a Web3-native data warehouse built from the ground up as a multichain data platform for dApps and developers in Gaming, DeFi, or any project needing next-gen analytics. We deliver fully decentralized yet enterprise-scale SQL + APIs to join on-chain and off-chain data in a single query

It is the first Web3-native decentralized data warehouse that connects on-chain and off-chain data to deliver broad, enterprise-grade use cases to smart contract applications. Developed as part of Chainlink Labs’ Startup with Chainlink initiative, the platform gives users and developers the ability to connect analytics directly to smart contracts through novel Proof of SQL cryptography, opening up a whole new set of use cases and business logic for smart contracts.

M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, works to accelerate the future of technology through investments, insights, and meaningful partnerships with Microsoft. We invest in enterprise software companies primarily in the Series A and B funding stages, with a focus on autonomous systems, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, DevOps, healthcare and digital biology, vertical SaaS, and Web3, metaverse, and gaming technologies. As part of its value-add to portfolio companies, M12 empowers entrepreneurs with capital, customer connections, and deep access to Microsoft’s ecosystem and leadership. M12 has offices in San Francisco, Seattle, London, Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Bengaluru.

Chainlink is the industry standard for building, accessing, and selling oracle services needed to power hybrid smart contracts on any blockchain. Its oracle networks provide smart contracts with a way to reliably connect to any external API and leverage secure off-chain computations for enabling feature-rich applications. Chainlink currently secures tens of billions of dollars across DeFi, insurance, gaming, and other major industries, and offers global enterprises and leading data providers a universal gateway to all blockchains.