WISeKey International Holding Ltd (NASDAQ: WKEY, SIX: WIHN), a Swiss based cyber security and IoT company, announced the acquisition of a 5% interest, through a USD 5.5 million transaction, in ARAGO, a German privately held technology company. The investment aims to provide the benefits of Artificial Intelligence to enterprise customers globally through Knowledge Automation. Founded in Frankfurt am Main 1995, ARAGO uses modern technologies such as inference and machine learning to automatically operate any business process. Initially, the investment in ARAGO will be made by way of a convertible loan (“Convertible Loan”) which is to be paid by WISeKey to ARAGO in five instalments of USD 1.1 million each, starting August 2020 and ending December 2020.
The investment made by WISeKey for 5% stake in ARAGO is based on a USD 110 million valuation taking into account the investment of KKR in ARAGO (https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/16/arago-secures-55m-from-pe-firm-kkr-to-automate-enterprise-it/) and the subsequent buyout of KKR by ARAGO’s founder Hans-Christian Boos.
WISeKey as consequence of the strategic investment in ARAGO reinforces its technology and market position in the Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) area. The direct impact of ARAGO’s AI and data technology, will bring new revenue sources for WISeKey’s Digital Transformation strategy as:
Human knowledge is normally hard to incorporate in digital processes without UX problems. With the HIRO™ problem solving engine the ability to capture human expertise and scale decision processes becomes available to any application built on top of the platform. This is the only way to apply experience in billion-device IoT scenarios.
Scaling is normally a huge effort after getting things to work. The ARAGO micro service environment allows immediate deployment of individualized services to an auto-scaling 24/7 operated platform making specialized services scalable in no time.
Agile and reliable development of any business use-case depends on a stable environment. ARAGO’s API layer hides the complexity of a PB sized data processing environment from developers and customers, allows detailed rights management and ensures top performance.
Having a scalable data backend is the key to any data-driven business. ARAGO’s knowledge core can handle semantic, time-series and blob data at petabyte scale and has necessary compliance and security features for regulatory and enterprise operations. WISeKey’s IoT business is expanded to data driven solutions immediately.
WISeKey owns everything necessary to authenticate Users and Devices. With ARAGO, authentication is extended to data and action. The ARAGO platform has an oAuth based Identity that is used to control access to any data point or AI activity which can easily be integrated with the WISeKey services.
The increasing adoption of AI and IoT convergence is one of the primary factors that is driving the growth of the market. Over the past five years, a rapid surge in the adoption of AI IoT cloud services has been witnessed. It is driven by its capabilities to provide enterprise wide array of resources they can utilize to scale, orchestrate, and support their operations.
Additionally, WISeData.CH will be adding secure AI cloud services from Switzerland in cooperation with ARAGO, using Swiss data centers and Swiss Alps Mountain bunkers to store the personal data generated by users and enterprises. WISeKey, is the first e-security company in the world to offer decentralized Trust Models and PKI architecture. In addition, WISeKey allows data ecosystems to be federated via a unique digital identity, enabling users to interact while maintaining control of their personal data. Users have the have the freedom to choose where their data resides and who is allowed to access it. By decoupling content from the application and digital identity itself, users will be able to use their data as currency and develop digital data dividends-based solutions as consumers have a right to know and control how their data is being used and be able to monetize their data (www.wiseid.com).
Due to new personal cloud alternatives, gone are the days of huge centralized clouds and ID Meta systems with no respect for personal data. This trend which WISeKey is spearheading, is motivating users and enterprises to develop personal clouds. Personal clouds shift the gravity center to users, giving them the ability to retake control of their personal data and benefit from leveraging local data centers, increased security and trust models, and also through digital identification technologies provide trust without compromising neutrality and independence.
WISeData.CH will be fully integrated into WISeID which offers a secure vault to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Protecting PII is important to avoid impersonation and identity theft. All personal data saved using WISeID is controlled, encrypted, password protected and never communicated to third parties.
"This strategic investment allows WISeKey solutions to integrate AI into our platform strengthening ARAGO's offering among WISeKey’s enterprise clients and bringing new sources of revenue for both companies," said Carlos Moreira, Founder and CEO of WISeKey.
"We are excited about this new strategic investment from WISeKey and are confident that our combined customers will receive best-of-breed cybersecurity solutions with the full integration of the ARAGO," said Hans-Christian Boos, Founder of ARAGO.
The Managed WISeKey ROT serves as a common trust anchor, which is recognized by all operating systems and applications to ensure authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of online transactions. With the Cryptographic ROT embedded on a device, the IoT product manufacturers can use code signing certificates and a cloud-based signature-as-a-service to secure interactions among and between objects and people.