French distributed cloud computing network iEx.ec has closed its ICO in just three hours, having raised its target of $12 mln.

iEx, which is aiming to build the world’s first cloud network leveraging combined user capacity, received around 10,000 Bitcoins from over 1200 investors.

Its token, RLC, will be the sole method of payment for cloud services upon launch.

The crowdsale is over. 10,000 #BTC objective reached in less than 3 hours. Thank you all for your amazing support! #Ethereum #blockchain — iEx.ec (@iEx_ec) April 19, 2017

Expanding on the roadmap afforded by the success of the crowd sale, CEO Gilles Fedak said in a press release:

“...We can now organize decentralized infrastructures and marketplaces, where everyone will be able to rent its computing resources, where the innovative SMEs which design Big Data and HPC applications will be able to sell them online immediately with the needed resources to run them, and where highly valued data sets will be rentable with a fine-grain business model.”

The lightning speed with which the startup gathered funds makes it the fifth-largest ICO in history.

iEx joins a host of startups in the crypto space and further afield to have closed hugely successful crowd sale schemes well ahead of schedule.

Recent examples include the Digital Liquid Venture Fund, which earlier this month reached its $10 mln target in six hours. Humaniq and Matchpool also feature among 2017’s high flyers.

At iEx, Gilles and fellow chief scientist Dr. Haiwu He will now “lead the team on a four-year plan” with the first results to be revealed at this year’s Liferay Developer Conference in Amsterdam in October.