Arianee raises $21 million to deliver ownership NFTs with physical luxury goods – TechCrunch

Arianee has raised a $21 million Series A round (€20 million) in a round led by Tiger Global. The company issues digital ownership and authenticity certificates on behalf of partner brands.

For instance, a luxury and fashion brand can replace the authenticity card that you get with your new watch or handbag with a digital certificate. As those certificates are non-fungible tokens, you can know for sure that there’s only one NFT for this specific good with this serial number and activation date.

And, of course, if you want to sell your good, you can also prove the authenticity to the buyer and transfer the certificate to another owner. A certificate isn’t tied to your name or email address. Customers get a wallet address and stores their certificates in their wallet.

Arianee customers can then leverage these certificates for other purposes. When people download the Arianee app and add the digital passport to their smartphone, brands get a new channel to reach their customers.

You may have noticed that NFTs have become quite trendy over the past year. Arianee plans to take advantage of that as well with support for airdrops, metaverse deployments and cool in-app visualizations.

It integrates with their CRM and gives more information about second-hand customers. Brands can also have their own white-label app or integrate Arianee’s features in their own apps to control the experience.

Customers include Printemps, Breitling, Groupe Casino, Vacheron Constantin, Paris Fashion Week, Panerai and IWC.

In addition to Tiger Global, existing investors Bpifrance, ISAI, Noia Capital and Cygni Labs are also participating in today’s round. Commerce Ventures and Motier Ventures are also investing in Arianee as first-time investors.

Interestingly, this isn’t a traditional equity round. Investors are buying shares in the startups, but also $ARIA20 tokens. Those tokens power the open source protocol behind Arianee’s NFTs. Behind the scenes, Arianee relies on the main Ethereum blockchain and a side-chain called the POAnetwork.

“We are thrilled to welcome one of the most influential global investors to our journey and to see our historical partners continue to back us,” co-founder and CEO Pierre-Nicolas Hurstel said in a statement. “The structure of the investment in both equity & $ARIA20 token shows how a diverse global range of investors, from Bpifrance to Tiger Global, is willing to invest on open source and SaaS web3 solutions. Web3 is eating the world and we believe brands can leverage this revolution to regain control of their digital presence.”