Data start-up, InfoSum today announced that it has added $5 million to its seed funding, taking the total raised to date to $8 million. Joining existing investors Mark Suster from Upfront Ventures and Roger Ehrenberg from IA Ventures, are LocalGlobe’s Saul Klein and Mosaic Ventures’ Mike Chalfen. The additional investment will be used to build the company’s senior management team and bring the company’s first products to market.

InfoSum connects siloed data sets within companies to maximise the collaborative power of this information. According to the start-up, companies wishing to collaborate have, to date, lacked the ability to do so securely and in a way that protects the integrity of their information. Built on decentralised technology, InfoSum anonymises distributed data at source, eliminating privacy risks as the data is not pooled or shared with third parties. Companies can now get more out of data, while meeting all data protection regulations, including GDPR.

“We all understand that data is extremely valuable in helping companies develop better, more sophisticated services. The challenge is that to unlock that potential, you’ve got to share it. The ability to collaborate with multiple data sources, whilst at the same time preserving its governance, security and consent, is very much the Holy Grail,” Saul Klein partner at LocalGlobe said. “The market opportunity is clear, combine that with the existing investors and the fact that Nick is one of the best minds globally when it comes to data, made getting involved a total no brainer.”

For Nick Halstead, founder and CEO at InfoSum, the value of data is often held within more than one company, but sharing data is a precarious endeavour because it requires data to be centralised. This makes it vulnerable to all sorts of liabilities, including re-identification which is increasingly frowned upon by regulators around the globe. “Decentralised technology will disrupt how companies share and collaborate on data, obliterating the competitive barriers currently in place,” he added.

The company was founded by Halstead in 2015 following his departure from human intelligence company DataSift, which has raised in excess of $70 million and formed strategic partnerships with Facebook and LinkedIn. Before founding DataSift, Halstead developed tweetmeme and the Retweet button which was acquired by Twitter.

“I’ve invested in two of Nick’s companies over the past few years – he’s a world-class technical visionary and company builder,” Mark Suster, managing partner of Upfront Ventures said. “Data privacy is front and centre of international legislation and is on the desk of CEOs globally. InfoSum is poised to be a major solution to solve data privacy and cross-company distribution.”

With this seed funding, InfoSum is also appointing Nicola Walker as chief commercial officer (CCO). Walker joins InfoSum from Aimia Inc where she was VP of global product strategy. Most of her career has been spent in the development of consumer-driven marketing and she has also held roles at Nectar and Avois. Walker will report directly into CEO Halstead.