Simba Chain Inc., a blockchain startup best known for providing its technology to U.S. defense organizations, announced Wednesday that it raised $25 million in new funding to pursue technological advances such as nonfungible tokens.

The Series A funding round was led by Valley Capital Partners and joined by Notre Dame Pit Road Fund, Elevate Ventures and Stanford Law School Venture Fund.

Simba Chain’s technology made headlines in 2018 when the U.S. Navy announced that it would pilot blockchain technology to track aviation components through their supply chain lifecycle. The company’s technology is now used by the U.S. Airforce, Army, Navy and Marines, as well as Boeing and a number of other customers for a wide range of commercial applications.

“Demand for our Web3 smart contracts platform has accelerated across all of our markets much quicker than we anticipated,” said Joel Neidig, co-founder and chief executive of Simba Chain. “Users across multiple spectrums have embraced and validated the Simba Chain model, which simplifies the development of smart contracts.”

Neidig also credited the fact that Simba Chain supports multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, RSK, Stellar and many others, enabling the company’s smart contract applications to be highly portable.

The startup incubated at the University of Notre Dame in 2017 and rapidly landed numerous government contracts early on. The model of the technology involved a rapid development of applications based on blockchain technology for secure, complex environments, allowing customers to launch without the need to hire costly consultants.

“Simba Chain solves a very big problem; most companies don’t know how to adopt or manage blockchain technology,” said Joseph Grundfest, a Stanford Law School professor and member of Stanford’s Center for Blockchain Research. “Simba Chain makes that easy and cheap, so it’s a bit like Stripe for the blockchain.”

The company said that over the past 18 months the company has secured contracts with more than 30 institutions of higher learning in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia that are now using its technology in their schools of business and law.

Simba Chain also developed a digital marketplace using nonfungible tokens for an unnamed major university.

The company said that it plans to use the additional funding to pivot into dedicating additional resources to emerging opportunities such as NFTs. Although nonfungible tokens have made headlines due to their popularity as collectible artwork, there are a number of applications for enterprise solutions such as anti-counterfeiting of luxury goods, supply-chain tracking and tokenized securities.

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