The IOTA Foundation, an open-source non-profit foundation from Germany, is announcing that Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC), the corporate venture capital company of the Bosch Group, has purchased a significant amount of IOTA tokens. Dr. Hongquan Jiang, Partner at RBVC, will also join the IOTA Foundation’s advisory board. This follows the successful launch of IOTA’s data marketplace, with more than 30 leading companies worldwide participating.

RBVC has made a strategic move in buying IOTA tokens, one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world. In doing so it hopes to intensify the collaboration with IOTA and help elevate the technology to maturity by bringing it closer to Bosch’s global ecosystem and key partners. RBVC’s investment broadens the potential for new business models for IoT in any number of verticals and uniquely positions IOTA and Bosch to take on the challenges of IoT together.

IOTA, which is the first distributed ledger technology to go beyond a Blockchain, enables machines to securely transact data and money with each other. This is the stepping stone to the innovative Internet of Things based applications and business models for mobility, energy, Industry 4.0 and more. The IOTA technology has already enabled more than $10 billion to be transacted and has been utilized for use cases including transparent value chains, secure Over-the-Air Updates and feeless micropayment-based electric vehicle charging, parking and more.

“We have been working with the IOTA team for more than one year. I’m very excited about IOTA’s innovative tangle technology, which could potentially become the standard underlying technology for trustless machine to machine communication, security, and payment in the IoT space,” said Dr. Hongquan Jiang. “There will be much synergy between Bosch and the IOTA Foundation, and I’m looking forward to seeing more industrial adoptions of this technology in the near future.”

“Distributed ledger technology will play an important role in the industry of tomorrow,” said Dr. Ingo Ramesohl, Managing Director at RBVC. “Bosch is one of the pioneers actively driving the adoption of DLT in the automotive and IoT industry. The investment in IOTA’s token, the first ever token investment of RBVC, will help us work closely with the IOTA Foundation to explore the industrialization of this exciting technology.”

“The purchase of IOTA tokens by RBVC is a strong vote of confidence for the technology and the ecosystem we have built over the years,” said Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder of IOTA. ”Distributed ledgers are the future when it comes to truly unleashing the Internet of Things, and with IOTA we see the potential of becoming the backbone of this emerging Machine Economy. We will continue to intensify our collaboration with leading IoT companies and hope to have the first go-to-market solutions ready by the end of 2018.”

“Bosch and IOTA have been in contact since 2015 and are working together on multiple fronts, including the Trusted IoT Alliance (TIOTA) and other projects,” said David Sønstebø, Co-Founder of IOTA. “The decision by RBVC to acquire a significant amount of iota tokens solidifies the idea of the Machine Economy and how significant leaders in this space share our vision.”