Data Gumbo - Most Innovative Company of the Year

Company: Data Gumbo, Houston, TX
Company Description: Data Gumbo provides the industrial smart contract network secured and powered by blockchain. With integrated real-time capabilities, GumboNet reduces contract leakage, frees up working capital, enables real-time cash and financial management and delivers provenance unprecedented speed, accuracy, visibility and transparency, as well as automated and accurate ESG standards measurement and reporting.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Innovative Company of the Year - Up to 100 Employees

Nomination Title: Data Gumbo

Data Gumbo was founded by entrepreneur and energy executive Andrew Bruce in 2016 after he spotted an opportunity to eliminate a sizable operational inefficiency between an oil supermajor and one of its suppliers worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Data Gumbo’s engineers set out to build a solution to unify operational field data with automated smart contracts resulting in GumboNet™, the massively interconnected industrial smart contract network powered by blockchain that delivers transactional certainty in commercial relationships.

In 2020, Data Gumbo won Gold in the Blockchain Solution category of the ABAs. Since then, the company has experienced a rocket-like trajectory as adoption and business use cases have become evident to the most critical of global heavy-asset industries - especially as they navigate the crises of the past year. Data Gumbo is abroadly recognized innovator, as noted in the Forbes 2020 Energy Awards as the “Disruptive Innovator” and in being named to CB Insights Blockchain 50.

With a global customer base of oil and gas, construction, mining, supply chain and logistics, and manufacturing, the company is experiencing rapid expansion. Its headquarters is in Houston with offices in London and Stavanger, Norway, with plans for Latin America and the Middle East.

In 2019, Data Gumbo experienced significant traction including a Series A funding round, adoption by major oil & gas companies and expansion into construction. As well, much of 2019’s momentum was around the successful water haulage pilot with the OOC Oil & Gas Blockchain Consortium (now Blockchain for Energy) of 10 major oil and gas companies.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190507005752/en/Data-Gumbo-Secures-6M-Series-Funding-Venture
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190912005015/en/OOC-Oil-Gas-Blockchain-Consortium-Awards-Data

But it was 2020 - amid the pandemic and oil price crash - that global companies recognized the need to find cost savings with innovative technologies to survive. Data Gumbo achieved numerous milestones as a recognized leader, including a robust sales pipeline and customer base; doubling the size of the company; receiving a Series B funding round led by VC firm L37 with repeat investments from Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and Equinor Ventures; and the addition of several partnerships. Other highlights included the new application of GumboNet by Air Drilling Associates (ADA) in Southeast Asia to support geothermal energy drilling contract execution and invoice payment processes within the energy sector; deployment by HENDERSON, a sales and services company for drilling rigs and capital equipment, marking the industry’s first use of smart contracts between capital equipment sales, services, repair and maintenance operations; and adoption by several national oil companies and leading oil and gas operators.

Now Data Gumbo is being adopted at a fast clip - one indicative of recognition that its innovation is not only disruptive, but critical to enable monetary and operational survival for coming out of crisis.

Trust in business transactions is imperative to reduce inefficiencies, capture lost value and save on wasted costs that global enterprises face every year in the realm of billions of dollars. Data Gumbo offers a new approach to transactional certainties — one that eliminates friction for streamlined operations, where every transaction is accurate and certain, touchless and automated, based on smart contracts.

Data Gumbo endeavors to be the largest smart contract network in the world and to change the way the world does business.

The antithesis of token-hyped, public blockchains, Data Gumbo offers a purpose-built, private and permissioned blockchain network called GumboNet that enables and automates the execution of smart contracts for industrial enterprises. By transforming existing natural language contracts to “smart” digital contracts, the network creates validated, auditable and immutable records delivering trust and value to counterparties.

Available as a subscription, GumboNet frees users from excessive IT spend and the hefty administrative burdens required to build their own solution. Business outcomes include speed, accuracy, transparency, visibility, security, massive cost-savings, the removal of inefficiencies, and - finally - trust. For example, service providers get paid for exactly what is delivered and buyers pay only for what is measurably delivered — and payment automation takes a typical 90-day invoice process down to as little as two days.

As GumboNet consists of interconnected companies, it will function as seamlessly as LinkedIn - surfacing counterparties easily with whom you do business. For the first time, commercial relationship automation is possible, easy and affordable.

The company has received numerous accolades since 2019 ( https://www.datagumbo.com/our-awards) and regularly announces its adoption and momentum ( https://media.datagumbo.com/en). The attachments to this award as well feature notable recognition and key pieces to illustrate innovation.