Samsung joins forces with Sony to support Soneium blockchain incubator

Samsung Next, the venture capital arm of the South Korean tech giant, has announced its participation in the Soneium Spark program through an investment in Singapore-based Startale Labs.

Without revealing any particulars of the investment, Samsung Next investor John Yim said in a blog post that the move would back Startale Labs, which is “at the forefront of solving key challenges in the Web3 ecosystem.”

Startale Labs was established in 2023 by Sota Watanabe as a strategic entity aligned with Astar Network to support its development. Startale Labs began as an independent initiative and later formed a joint venture with Sony Network Communications Inc. Both Startale Labs and Astar Network were founded by Sota Watanabe, who is also the director at Sony Blockchain Solutions Labs, which recently launched Soneium, an Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain.

According to Sony, Soneium is expected to make web3 more accessible to users while offering various meaningful use cases. The network will leverage optimistic rollups built using the Optimism OP stack and integrate the underlying infrastructure of Startale’s Astar zkEVM.

Soneium has announced an incubation program dubbed Soneium Spark that seeks to incentivize web3 developers to build dapps on the blockchain by offering investments of up to $100,000 per team. 

According to Yim Samsung Next will participate in the incubator to “nurture a community of visionary creators and innovators,” with the goal turning ideas into partical solutions that foster the long-term growth of the web3 sector.

Samsung joins other blockchain industry players like Circle, Alchemy, Chainlink and The Graph, that are also partaking in the incubation program alongside Sony subsidiaries like Sony Music, and Sony Pictures.

Earlier this year, Startale Labs raised $3.5 million in an extended seed funding round from Samsung Next and United Overseas Bank Venture Management. However, it remains unclear if this is the same investment referenced in the recent blog post.

Samsung’s web3 ventures

Samsung has previously dipped its toes in the web3 sector via several collaborations. Last year, the tech giant partnered with Polygon-based streaming service Savage to introduce its app on Samsung smart TVs. In 2022, the tech giant offered special NFTs in collaboration with Theta Labs to customers who preordered its smartphones.

Samsung is also a key partner of the Bank of Korea in the development of its a central bank digital currency.This coalition focuses on creating a digital currency ecosystem that can operate without internet connectivity.