About

UTU Technologies provides models of digital trust to increase trust across the entire internet. Their products enable easier, safer, and more trustworthy transactions with decentralized applications (dApps) in the Web3 and DeFi space. UTU offers solutions for both dApp users and developers, aiming to build trust and transparency in the online ecosystem. They have partnerships with various companies and investors in the blockchain industry.

History

UTU was born out of Trust Engine for Mobility for MARAMOJA that provided mobility service in Kenya. The MARAMOJA team while doing customer research for its mobility services concluded that trust is one of the most important factors for any service in the Africa sub-continent. The trust Engine for Mobility was designed to increase the trust on the cab drivers. In 2017, the team decided that the idea of trust engine can be expensed to other service industry and thus UTU was born.

In 2018, UTU was invited to join Z03 Cohort of Zeroth AI in Hong Kong. The Cohort was an important milestone for the UTU and MARAMOJA team. During the Cohort, UTU met people from Animoca, Artesian, and DeepCore (SoftBank Group’s Subsidiary focused on early stage AI) who believed in their huge vision and joined the UTU family.

In 2018, after the Cohort in Hong Kong, the team came up with a framework that would become the foundation of UTU protocol. The protocol was the first formal step towards decentralizing the technology and moving from trust engine towards trust infrastructure for digital economy.

In March 2019, the UTU team attended Æternity Ventures Starfleet 1 Accelerator Program in Sofia, Bulgaria where they met Luka Sučić, Nikola Stojanow, Yanislav Malahov who helped them refine the model further, solving for the remaining obstacles. The team also bagged $500,000 bridge funding in the Accelerator Program.

By the end of 2020, UTU has been active in mobility and financial services markets and is being developed with anchor partners across nearly every digital economy sector spanning dozens of countries on 6 continents.

UTU current has about 10 people between MARAMOJA and UTU at their HQ in Nairobi and an R&D collaboration with the Agents, Interactions, and Complexity Group at the University of Southampton in as well as the newly established UKRI Trusted Autonomous Systems Hub.